esult
of all this tribulation! We see at last, a government convinced
of the folly of a policy which brought on such a succession of
disastrous wars. We see missionaries and native Christians fairly
well protected throughout the whole extent of the Empire. We see,
moreover, a national movement in the direction of educational reform,
which, along with the Gospel of Christ, promises to impart new
life to that ancient people.

The following incident may serve to show the state of uncertainty
in which we lived during the interregnum preceding the return of
the Court.

While waiting for an opportunity to get my "train (the university)
on the track," I spent the summer of 1901 at Pearl Grotto, my usual
retreat, on the top of a hill over a thousand feet high, overlooking
the capital. "The Boxers are coming!" cried my writer and servants
one evening about twilight. "Haste--hide in the rocks--they will
soon be on us!" "I shall not hide," I replied; and seizing my rifle
I rested it on a wall which commanded the approach. They soon became
visible at the distance of a hundred yards,
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waving flambeaux, and yelling like a troop of devils. Happily I
reserved my fire for closer range; for leaving the path at that
point they betook themselves to the top of another hill where they
waved their torches and shouted like madmen. We were safe for the
night; and in the morning I reported the occurrence to Mr. O'Conor,
the British charge d'affaires, who was at a large temple at the
foot of the hills. "They were not Boxers," he remarked, "but a
party we sent out _to look for a lost student_."

POSTSCRIPT

It is the fashion to speak slightingly of the Boxer troubles, and
to blink the fact that the movement which led to the second capture
of Peking and the flight of the Court was a serious war. The southern
viceroys had undertaken to maintain order in the south. Operations were
therefore localised somewhat, as they were in the Russo-Japanese War.
It is even said that the combined forces were under the impression
that they were coming to the rescue of a helpless government which
was doing all in its power to protect foreigners. Whether this was
the effect of diplomatic dust thrown in their eyes or not, _it
was a fiction_.

How bitterly the Empress Dowager was bent on exterminating the
foreigner, may be inferred from her decree ordering the massacre of
foreigners and their adherents--a savage edict which the southern
satraps re