March 28.
Weather such as prevailed yesterday while] these lines were being written seems to imply that spring has indeed come, The budding willows, assuming their mantle of delicate green lend corroboration, but Shanghai knows only too well that there may still be changes} in the weather, and that cold days may still be encountered. Some were welcoming! spring a week or so ago, when rude Boreas brought snow from the north, and for' a few! days the sentiments of C.P. Cranch on this time of the year seemed so forcefully to apply. Cranch was the worst of realists; he was a pessimist to boot, as the following so clearly' shows:— there comes a little thaw, Still the air is chill and raw, Here and there a patch of snow, Dirtier than the ground below, Dribbles down a marshy flood: Ankle deep you stick in mud In the meadows while you sing, "This is Spring"
And it really was like that only a very short} while ago, It might be so again, for Shanghai seems to be a law unto herself when it comes to the question of weather. But there are signs that the season has really established herself, Joyous bunches of flowers, in the hands' of unkempt vendors, shriek the] ald news along the Bund, coolies hard at rork at the Race Course are laying new turf over which "flannelled fools" will disport themselves where of late the ground served the antics of the "muddied oafs." Soon the speedy-women" will do their dirty work on the superfluous vegetation which strives to oust the grass from local lawns. Meantime young men's fancies are doing their annual} turning and the "month of marriages is drawing nigh," for romance stalks abreast
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.