The extension of the American post-office to Shanghai, whereby a letter can be sent from Shanghai to New York for two cents gold is a remarkable achievement, and speaks much for the generosity of the Chinese Revenue Board in permitting this heavy competition. Many of the other nations have post-offices, but the rates are higher. The great international Opium Commission, its chairman the American, Bishop Brent, which did the impossible by disenthralling a hundred million habitués from the pythonic toils of opium in two years, sat in Shanghai in February, 1909, in its most memorable conference. The chief credit is due to America for leadership in the altruistic sentiment, and to China, Britain, India and Hongkong for the immense altruistic sacrifice of revenue. Now that the pipe and the poppy fields have been wiped nearly out, it remains for the nations to stamp out morphia, the hypodermic syringe and the drugged cigarette. And poor China is not the maker of these infernal tools. Shanghai has a modern water, an electric and street making plants, which are being copied through China as fast as funds can be collected by the municipalities. For a long time it was impossible to escape quickly from the deadly summer climate, but railways and steamships have placed the inland mountain resorts of Kuling, at Kowkiang, 3,000 feet high, and at Mokan Mountain within easy reach. Phutho, the famous Buddhist mountain island, is also near enough for quick steamship service. Every debilitated Shanghai dweller used to go to far Japan at great cost to recuperate, but this expense will be less necessary, as these nearer resorts are opened up by a fast developing transportation service. Kuling Mountain is a missionary resort. Before it was discovered broken-down workers had to be sent to Japan or home on a furlough if they were able to stand the long voyage and the boards were able to stand the expense. The work of missionaries is the hardest under dangerous pioneer conditions, and Kuling Mountain is enabling the missionary quickly to restore herself or himself to efficiency without leaving China. The waters around Shanghai, including Seven Mile Lake, afford excellent facilities for house-boating. The municipality uses tall, red-turbanned Sikh police from India, as well as native Chinese lukongs, all under foreign officers. The docks, ways and engine shops of Shanghai, both foreign and native owned, are equipping the waters of Central China with small steamboats, though there is a strong competition from Hongkong, Japan and Britain, and some competition from Manila. Shanghai can not set out thousands of lanterns on a dozen hills 1,800 feet up in the night skies, as gorgeous Hongkong can, yet her more intimate garden and house illuminations are famous in China. The poet may justly rave and sigh: “Oh! give me an eve in that fairy Cathay, When a thousand near moons change the night into day.”