le to that deity,
dressed certain ladies of the court as her attendants, with the head
eunuch Li Lien-ying as their protector, ordered the court artists to
paint appropriate foreground and background and then called young Yu,
her court photographer, to snap his camera and allow Old Sol the great
artist of the universe with a pencil of his light to paint her as she
was.

One day while visiting a curio store on Liu Li Chang, the great book
street of Peking, my attention was called by the dealer to four small
paintings of peach blossoms in black and white, from the brush of the
Empress Dowager. These pictures had been in the panels of the partition
between two of the rooms of Her Majesty's apartments in the Summer
Palace, and so I considered myself fortunate in securing them.

"You notice," said he, "that each section of these branches must be
drawn by a single stroke of the brush. This is no easy task. She must
be able to ink her brush in such a way as to give a clear outline of
the limb, and at the same time to produce such shading as she may
desire. Should her outline be defective, she dare not retouch it;
should her shading be too heavy or insufficient, she cannot take from
it and she may not add to it, as this would make it defective in the
matter of calligraphy. A stroke once placed upon her paper, for they
are done on paper, is there forever. This style of work is among the
most difficult in Chinese art."

After securing these paintings, I showed them to a number of the best
artists of the present day in Peking, and they all pronounced them good
specimens of plum blossom work in monochrome, and they agreed with Lady
Miao, that if the Empress Dowager had given her whole time to painting
she would have passed into history as one of the great artists of the
present dynasty.

One day when one of her court painters called I showed him these
pictures. He agreed with all the others as to the quality of her brush
work, but called my attention to a diamond shaped twining of the
branches in one of them.

"That," said he, "is proof positive that it is her work."

"Why?" I inquired.

"Because a professional artist would never twine the twigs in that
fashion."

"And why not?"

"They would not do it," he replied. "It is not artistic."

"And why do not her friends call her attention to this fact?" I
inquired.

"Who would do it?" was his counter question.

VII

The Empress Dowager--As a Woman

The first aud