Publisher's Synopsis
Book Excerptndarmes, and innumerable features typically andpicturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in thebewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes.Whether the narrow streets of the native city are clean or dirty, whether garbage heaps lie festering in the broiling sun, sending theirdisgusting effluvia out to annoy the sense of smell at every turn, themunicipality cares not a little bit. Indifference to the well-being ofthe native pervades it; there is present no progressive prosperity.Every second person I met was, or seemed to be, a Government official.He was dressed in immaculate white clothes of the typical ugly Frenchcut, trimmed elaborately with an ad libitum decoration of gold braidand brass buttons. All was so different from Singapore and Hong-Kong, and one did not feel, in surroundings which made strongly for the_laissez-faire_ of the Frenchman in the East, ashamed of the fact thathe was an Englishman.Three days north lies Hong-Kong, an all-Read Mo
