shes, and all thrown up into the air whenever a
man steps on it or a cart moves through. Our room faces the south on
this road. All day long the sun pours through the bamboo shades and the
hot air brings in that gray dust, and everything you touch, including
your own skin, is gritty and has a queer dry feeling that makes you
think you ought to run for water. I am learning to shut the windows and
inner blinds afternoons. Isn't it strange that in the latitude of New
York this drought should be expected every spring? In spite of all this
the fields have crops growing, thinly, to be sure, on the hard gray
fields. There are very few trees, and they are not of the biggest. The
grain is already about fit to cut, and the onions are ripe. After a
while it will rain and rain much and then new crops will be put in. The
flowers are almost gone and I am sorry that we did not see the famous
peonies. You will be interested to know that they keep the peonies
small; even the tree kind are cut down till they are the size of those
little ones of mine. The tuber peonies are transplanted each year or in
some way kept small and the blossoms are lovely and little. I have seen
white rose peonies and at first thought they were roses. The buds look
almost like the buds of our big white roses and they are very fragrant.
The peony beds are laid out in terraces held in place by brick walls,
usually oblong or oval, something like a huge pudding mold on a table.
Other times they are planted on the flat and surrounded by bamboo fences
of fancy design and geometrical pattern, usually with a square form to
include each division. The inner city has many peony beds of that sort,
both the tree and tuber kind, but they have only leaves to show now.

Yesterday we went to the summer palace and to-day we are going to the
museum. That is really inside the Forbidden City, so at last we shall
set foot on the sacred ground. The summer palace is really wonderful,
but sad now, like all things made on too ambitious a scale to fit into
the uses of life. There is a mile of loggia ornamented with the green
and blue and red paintings which you see imitated. Through a window we
had a peek at the famous portrait of old Tsu Hsu and she looks just as
she did when I saw it exhibited in New York. The strange thing about it
is that it is still owned by the Hsu family. Huge rolls of costly rugs
and curtains lie in piles round the room and everything is covered with
this fine dust