pen, and whether there is really any danger.

It has been directly telegraphed from London by Her Majesty's
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Lord Salisbury, so gossip says, that as
quite enough has been heard of this Boxer business it must cease at
once. Is not the South African War still proceeding, and has England
not enough troubles without this additional one? It is almost
pathetic, this peremptory order from a vacillating Foreign Office that
never knows its own mind--this Canute-like bidding of the angry waves
of human men to stand still at once and be no more heard of. People in
Europe will never quite understand the East, for the East is ruled by
things which are impossible in a temperate climate.

Meanwhile, in the Palace, whose pink walls we see blinking at us in
the sun just beyond Legation Street, all is also topsy-turvy, the
Chinese reports say. The Empress Dowager, shrewdly listening to this
person and that, must feel in her own bones that it is a bad business,
and that it will not end well, for she understands dynastic disasters
uncommonly well. She has sent again and again for P'i Hsiao-li,
"Cobbler's-wax" Li, as he is called, the reputed false eunuch who is
master of her inner counsels, if Chinese small talk is to be believed.
The eunuch Li has been told earnestly to find out the truth and
nothing but the truth. A passionate old woman, this Empress Dowager of
China, a veritable Catherine of Russia in her younger days they say,
with her hot Manchu blood and her lust for ruling men. "Cobbler's-wax"
Li, son of a cobbler and falsely emasculated, they say, so that he
might become an eunuch of the Palace, from which lowly estate he has
blossomed into the real power behind the Throne, hastens off once more
to the palace of Prince Tuan, the father of the titular heir-apparent.
As Prince Tuan's discretion has long since been cast to the winds,
and Lao t'uan-yeh, or spiritual Boxer chiefs, now sit at the princely
banqueting tables discussing the terms on which they will rush the
Tartar city with their flags unfurled and their yelling forces behind
them, a foolish and irresolute government, made up of the most diverse
elements, and a rouge-smirched Empress Dowager, will then have to side
with them or be begulfed too. Anxiously listening, "Cobbler's-wax" Li
weights the odds, for no fool is this false eunuch, who through his
manly charms leads an Empress who in turn leads an empire. Half
suspicious and wholly unconvinc