Men who are obliged to sleep in these dormitories, have no other clothes or possessions than those on their backs. They buy their feod at the teahouses or from shops or venders, and eat it where they buy. During the few hours when they are neither working or sleeping, they have nowhere else ito go than the gambling tables or the street corners where they squat on their heels and watch the world go by.
The highly skilled workers, the supervisors, and foremen, who receive from forty-five dollars to one hundred a month can in proportion pay for better homes. They live in well built compounds more than one family may occupy: a house.
The ten dollar houses are the Same practically as the frame house previously described, except for better kitchens and stairways. The {twelve dollar houses boast in addition a front, paved court-yard. The thirty dollar houses, however, have both front and back courtyards, windows both back and front, and a variety of rooms. Downstairs there are a living room, dining room and kitchen, and: room either for storage or scrvants. Upstairs a guest room, ladies' sitting room, and two bed, Tooms.
These compounds have their own watchmen and iron gates at every street entrance: After eleven o'clock only certain gates remain unlocked, thus giving additional face and protection to those who live within, The furnishings of these homes vary from the most conservative Chinese arrangement to the most liberal western, or a combination of several nations' ideas. Many of these men have studied machinery in the west, and been associated with foreigners in China for years. Each develops theories of home furnishing which they work out wholly or in part according to the adaptability of the wife. Foreign mirrors, rocking chairs, pictures,—especially those of beautiful women,—framed portraits, foreign cups and saucers, plate rails, all have their adherents. If any have been able to secure a written testimonial of their abilities, this with a photograph attached is always framed and hung in a prominent place. It is quite the thing for experience and face for sons of Wealthy Chinese families to secure employment in foreign factories in minor executive positions. To those who know them only as sixty dollar and seventy dollar men, the beautifully carved -screens and blackwood and rose wood furniture, the scrolls, tapestries and ornaments of their bomes are a rich é awakening.
Tue "Central China Post" is informed that Mr. R. F. Hall has assumed charge of the Hankow branch of the Union Insurance Society of Canton, in place of Mr. G. G. Franklin, who has been transferred to the head. office of the firm'in Hongkong. Mr. Hall has come to Hankow from Batavia, where he was also manager of the society's branch. Mr. and Mrs: Franklin will be leaving for the south in about a week's time.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.