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of the column to bear no other inscription than the simple and expressive one of 'Muddle'.
The following extract from a letter which might have ended up in the receptacle below the column reflects the ridiculous level to which the affair had descended. Appearing in the Daily Press, it pummeled the pretensions of a previously published letter filled with "p's" by a person posing as “Public.”
"The pleasurable Peak-palace - Public's inappropriately and pretendedly predicted pauper-pack pandemonium preconceived by our preciously punctilious pulse-patting physician as a perquisite for the poor-pocketed, passes no particular peril from the pappy and peculiar publicity pictured and Pressed in it by that poppy-pated, pompous and pucka poltroon, Public, in his pyrotechnic but puzzling but platitudinous and ponderous passage."
The editor appends to this word play the note: "This is really too much! We positively decline to find space for any more of this alliterative rubbish.”
Fortunately for the sanity of Hongkong it was spared another public meeting. The suggestion of a plebiscite was successfully carried out. The eventual result was the statue of the Queen now to be seen in Victoria Park at Causeway Bay.