h to warm their half-frozen bodies.
The one-time jewel of the harem, who had seldom lifted her own
teacup, tugged at the mighty gates with her small hands till the
bars were raised and in rushed the mob. She raced to her home,
decked herself in all the splendid jewels he had given her, stuck
red roses in her black hair, and stood on a high roof and jeered
her lover as he fled for his life through the narrow streets.

The city is bright with the fires started by the rabble. The
yellow roofs, the pink walls and the towering marble pagodas catch
the reflection of the flames, making a scene of barbaric splendor
that would reduce the burning of Rome to a feeble little bonfire.

The pitiful, the awful and the very funny are so intermixed, my
face is fatally twisted trying to laugh and cry at the same time.
Right across from my window, on the street curbing, a Chinaman is
getting a hair-cut. In the midst of all the turmoil, hissing
bullets and roaring mobs, he sits with folded hands and closed eyes
as calm as a Joss, while a strolling barber manipulates a pair of
foreign shears. For him blessed freedom lies not in the change of
Monarchy to Republic, but in the shearing close to the scalp the
hated badge of bondage--his pigtail.

And, Mate, the first thing the looters do when they enter a house
is to snatch down the telephones and take them out to burn; for, as
one rakish bandit explained, they were the talking-machines of the
foreign devils and, if left, might reveal the names of the looters!

High-born ladies with two-inch feet stumble by, their calcimined
faces streaked with tears and fright. Gray-haired old men shiver
with terror and try to hide in any small corner. Lost children and
deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to
be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot. And
through it all, the mob runs and pitilessly mows down with sword
and knife as it goes, and plunders and sacks till there is nothing
left.

As I stood watching only a part of this horror, I heard a
long-haired brother near me say, as he kept well under cover,
"Inscrutable Providence!" But (my word!) I don't think it fair to
lay it all on Providence.

So far the foreign Legations have been well guarded. But there is
no telling how long the overworked soldiers can hold out. When
they cannot, the Lord help the least one of us.

Jack's friends are working day and night, guarding their property.

I guess