Salaries earned in the early days of the 20th century were comparatively. small, a foreigner from Home wetting og Tittle as $250.4 month at a native clerk $7 or $8. The purchasing value of the dollar, however was considerably greater, then how, "A-native earning $7 a month Would reckon his expenses roughly $3 for rice, $2 for lodgings and $2 for extra expenses. A dollar then was equivalent to approximately 900- 11900 cash, the Agure varying with the ale of exchange. For his amusement in his spare time the average Chinese clerk would spend the week-end after= noon in a Chinese theatre, expending, as Hittle as 40 cents, half of which was the price of admission, and the other hale for towels, tea and melon seeds.
Theatres were not so pretentious ax the modern theatre of today, but the plays produced were just. "as pie turesque and as noisily performed. Costumes were more easily duplicated authenticity, and histrionic talent Was nota whit levs admirable, The editor of the "North-China Daily News" was, at that time, Mr. RW. Little. A' man of peculiar habits and customs, he was held in awe by all the native staff with the exception of two, These two "boys" were the only Chinese who dared walla into his sanctum sanctorwm with im~ punity.
'Walking to the office in the morning he would, on arrival, toss his dilapidated' straw hat onto his desk. One could picture him sitting at his desk in the enclosed porch of the building, overlooking the street, a stub of 'a cigar hanging precariously between his lips, nearly scorching his close-cropped mustachio. Now and then he would relight that stub with spill of paper, but was never seen to use a match iit by his own hand. He never travelled in a rickshaw—he preferred walking. "His leaders were written in ink and there were only 8 who could decipher Mr. W. H. Lewis was now Sir Wilmot Lewis, correspondent of "The Times," London,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.