_have_ to keep going every minute when I am not at work.

They are calling up to me from the tennis court so I must stop for the
present.



SHANGHAI, CHINA, August, 1903.


The mail goes out this morning and I am determined to get this letter
written if I break up a dozen parties. As you see, I am in Shanghai,
this wonderful big understudy for Chicago, which seems about as
incongruous in its surroundings as a silk hat on a haystack! There
are beautiful boulevards, immense houses, splendid public gardens, all
hedged in by a yellow mass of orientals.

Every nationality is represented here, and people meet, mingle, and
separate in an ever changing throng. At every corner stands a tall
majestic Sikh, with head bound in yards of crimson cloth, directing
the movements of the crowd. Down the street comes a regiment of
English soldiers, so big and determined that one well understands
their victories. The ubiquitous Russian makes himself known at every
turn, silent and grave, but in his simplest dealings as merciless and
greedy as the country he represents. Frenchmen and Germans, and best
of all, the unquenchable American, join in the panorama, and the
result is something that one does not see anywhere else on the
globe. I guess if my dear brethren knew of the theatre parties,
dinners and dances I was going to, they would think I was on a
toboggan slide for the lower regions! I am mot though. I am simply