January 16—This business of trying 10) write my impressions about the country, with the country fast fading from me, is beginning to get on my nerves: so much so that I was reading a little book this morning about the countryside near London in search of inspiration: this book was written by a contribut the "Standard," and reprinted by. permission. Here is an example of his work:
"Some distance farther there is a_ stile sitting Upon which the view ranges over tw adjacent meadows. They are bounded by 9 copie of ash stoles and young ash trees, and the lesser of the meads is full of rush bunches and dotted with green anthills. Among these, just beyond gunshot, two rabbits are feeding: pausing and nibbling till they have eaten the tenderest blades, and then leisurely hopping a yard or so to another spot"
Honestly, as 1 tay in bed suffering all the discomforts of this wretched influenza-cold (which my wife rightly calls the first step a bad temper) T could Tot help comparing Imysel to the writer of the above words...< land found "myself thinking "of the "near: Shanghai" country now available to me, some: what as follows:
"Near my home there is a little barbed-wire gate, sitting upon which (ste—or what is it these literary yents say?) the view ranges over two. timber-yards and several coal-dumps which cover the recently ad-Jacent fields. They are bounded by a num-her of disinterred corpses in temporary cofins....half-filled creeks full. of bunches of garbage, the landscape being dotted with fence-green grave mounds: among them, just beyond stone's-throw. two alley-eats are Aghting. hissing and quibbling about any~ thing edible....then crawling away to take a meal from the nearest. garbage-can." tam really sorry about this...but that is what it feels like to be pent up in modern Shanghat lespeciatly if you happen to be a victim of the larch-flend Iniluenza.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.