uired that I paint for her a minimum of sixty
pictures a year, to be sent in about the time of the leading feasts.
These she decorates with her seals, and with appropriate sentiments
written by members of the College of Inscriptions, and she gives them,
as she gives her own, as presents during the feasts." Mr. Kuan and I
became intimate friends and he painted three pictures which he
presented to me for my collection.

One day another of the court painters came to call on me and during the
conversation told me that he was painting a picture of the Empress
Dowager as the goddess of mercy. Up to that time I had not been
accustomed to think of her as a goddess of mercy, but he told me that
she not infrequently copied the gospel of that goddess with her own
pen, had her portrait painted in the form of the goddess which she used
as a frontispiece, bound the whole up in yellow silk or satin and gave
it as a present to her favourite officials. Of course I thought at once
of my collection of paintings, and said:

"How much I should like to have a picture of the Empress Dowager as the
goddess of mercy!"

"I'll paint one for you," said he.

All this conversation I soon discovered was only a diplomatic
preliminary to what he had really come to tell me, which was that he
had been eating fish in the palace a few days before, and had swallowed
a fish-bone which had unfortunately stuck in his throat. He said that
the court physicians had given him medicine to dissolve the fish-bone,
but it had not been effective; he therefore wondered whether one of the
physicians of my honourable country could remove it. I took him to my
friend Dr. Hopkins who lived near by, and told him of the dilemma. The
doctor set him down in front of the window, had him open his mouth,
looked into his throat where he saw a small red spot, and with a pair
of tweezers removed the offending fish-bone. And had it not been for
this service on the part of Dr. Hopkins, I am afraid I should never
have received the promised picture, for he hesitated as to the
propriety of him, a court painter, doing pictures of Her Majesty for
his friends. However as he often thereafter found it necessary to call
Mrs. Headland to minister to his wife and children he came to the
conclusion that it was proper for him to do so, and one day he brought
me the picture.

The Empress Dowager not only loved to be painted as the goddess of
mercy, but she clothed herself in the garments suitab