(The editor, Richard Gundry, was usually the author of these unsigned pieces.)

A few years ago the Toast of "Absent Friends" was generally given in China. No gathering of friends ever assembled round the well-covered board without the host enunciating these two suggestive and thought-awakening words in a clear and emphatic tone, directly the wine was circulated. To have omitted this magical sentence would have been a social solecism, and an unpardonable offence. The claret would have tasted all the worse for the omission, and a sense of something needful left undone, would have marred the general festivity. We observe, amongst the minor social changes that are taking place in the Settlement, a growing tendency to omit this time honoured practise. The alteration is not without significance. It indicates, if we are not mistaken, a wish to "make believe" that we are perfectly at Home in China - and to banish the idea from our own minds and those of our friends, that we are at all anxious to reach England, and to let it be thought that this is our Home. We might decidedly do worse than adopt this view, as the date of our return is in most cases very uncertain, and it is well to be armed against either fortune. Another and quite opposite consideration may come in here. That is to say, the frequent trips that business compels us to take, seem to lessen the space that divides us from friends and relations, and to prevent our regarding them as "absent" in the old sense. When Chaaszes can run home every year between the seasons, and spend a month or two among familiar faces, the rigours of exile are certainly mitigated to those gentlemen.

At present, when we do hear the toast, the tone in which it is proposed varies. An old resident who has resided in Canton, and recollects the days when Sir Harry Parkes was an Interpreter, and when Peking was unblessed (?) by the presence of Foreign Legations, the patriarch who lived in the days when there was only one mail a month and but one, and only two Great Firms in China, this venerable host says "Absent Friends" in a genial warm-hearted way, not without a flavour of feeling in the voice that imparts to it a kind of pathos. Many recollections grave and gay crowd in upon him, as he says the two words, and for one transient moment, sadden with a shadow the smile upon his hospitable face.

The new man, who has no China memories before Shanghai was opened, does not utter the sentiment with the same kindness and sympathy. The words are a signal to begin drinking, and nothing more. They are jerked out in a way which shows that there is no distant recollection evoked by their repetition. It is a regulation toast and nothing more. Of course British Troops are always effervescing with loyalty, but for all that, it must be acknowledged that the way in which the Queen's health is proposed at Mess, is not very fervid. The "Absent Friends" of the present Shanghai generation, resembles this routine commemoration of Majesty very closely. Still, perhaps one would be sorry to lose the old observance which has been kept up for so many years, and has formed the prelude to so many pleasant nights.

For our part, as we raise the glass to our lips, and utter the two talismanic words, throngs of social pictures present themselves to our minds. We recall of course those Home scenes which were intertwined with the early years of life; and the affectionate faces that gathered round us when we first left the shelter of the Roof Tree, re-appear through an uncertain haze that may be the mist of time, or the result of a film gathering over our own eyes. We see, besides, the many friends made in China - than whom no true of more loyal ones can be found, and we have an instantaneous picture, rapid as a pistolgram, of the men who have succeeded and the men who have failed, of poor old A who went home in feeble health and is now lingering at his watering place, with only the occasional letters of a China hand to cheer him, and of B and C and all the other letters of the Alphabet who have home and the placens uxor and all heart can wish in England.

These and many more figures pass in review before us; and we are surely the better for forgetting the inevitable talk about Grey Shirtings, or ponies or the latest disastrous telegram, and indulging in an unselfish sympathetic feeling, though it only lasts for a moment, and is driven out of our heads the next moment, in criticism on the wine.