es are common in all parts of China during every period of
rebellion, war, riot or disturbance of any kind. The people go about
with fear on their faces, and horror in their voices, telling each
other in undertones of what some one, somewhere, is said to have seen
or heard. Nor are these superstitions confined to the common people.
Many of the better classes believe them and are filled with fear.

As the Tai-ping rebellion broke out when Miss Chao was about fifteen or
sixteen years of age, she would hear these stories for two or three
years before she entered the palace. After she had been taken into the
Forbidden City she would continue to hear them, brought in by the
eunuchs and circulated not only among all the women of the palace, but
among their own associates as well, and here they would take on a more
mysterious and alarming aspect to these people shut away from the
world, as ghost stories become more terrifying when told in the dim
twilight. May this not account in some measure for the attitude assumed
by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of 1900, and
their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions of
spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves
invulnerable to the bullets of their enemies?

It was when Miss Chao was ten years old that the conflict known as the
Opium War was brought to an end. It has been said that when the Emperor
was asked to sanction the importation of opium, he answered, "I will
never legalize a traffic that will be an injury to my people," but
whether this be true or not, it is admitted by all that the central
government was strongly opposed to the sale and use of the drug within
its domains. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the first time
the Chinese came into collision with European governments was over a
matter of this kind, and it is to the credit of the Chinese
commissioner when the twenty thousand chests of opium, over which the
dispute arose, were handed over to him, he mixed it with quicklime in
huge vats that it might be utterly destroyed rather than be an injury
to his people. They may have exhibited an ignorance of international
law, they may have manifested an unwise contempt for the foreigner, but
it remains a fact of history that they were ready to suffer great
financial loss rather than get revenue from the ruin of their subjects,
and that England went to war for the purpose of securing indemnity for
the opium dest