retching away over the
plains--a straggling procession on foot, in dingy white dresses,
carrying banners and flags and parasols. The coffin was slung on a
pole between bearers, and the wailing drone of a horn, and the thud of
a big drum came down the wind. Then the dust rose again, and the
melancholy sight was shut out. How curious was this little pleasure
spot of the Europeans, in the midst of this barbaric setting, in the
heart of old, old Asia!

Tiffin time. Every one who had not already taken refuge in the
dining-room now trooped up-stairs, hungry and laughing. I must tell you
of the dining-room. It was just a huge, square, bare room, with
whitewashed walls, with not a picture, with not an attempt at
decoration. A dozen trestle tables ran across it, with narrow, backless
benches on each side,--benches which had to be stepped over before one
could sit down. Every one stepped over them, however--ministers and
first-secretaries and Russian princesses and smart American women; and
you had to step over them again when the meal was finished, too, unless
by some preconcerted agreement every one rose at the same time. There
was not a chair in the place. Every one was dust-grimed, wind-blown and
bedraggled, and it was a gay, noisy meal, with laughter and cigarette
smoke and dust all through it.

In spite of the noise, however, there seemed little real merriment. One
became conscious of the atmosphere,--of the forced, rather strained, I
was going to say hostile, atmosphere. Every nation, as if by
prearrangement, withdrew to itself. The English sat together, the French
sat together; the Russians were apart; and the Americans in still
another section. There was no real intermingling, no real camaraderie,
except among the individual groups. There was much hand-shaking of
course, and greetings and perfunctory politeness, but no genuine
friendliness. The various ministers, for instance, did not sit together
as ministers, off on a holiday. On the contrary, each one sat at the
table with his countrymen. Over all there was a feeling of constraint,
distrust, national antipathies but thinly veiled, with but the merest
superficial pretense of disguising intense dislikes and jealousies.

In Peking there is great freedom of speech, and much outspoken criticism
of one nation by another; for there hatred and suspicions run high.
Therefore, of course, such feelings could not be submerged on an
occasion of this kind. Perhaps the war has in