so thick that it is not possible to tell the color of a
table top. Cloissonne vases, or rather images of the famous blue ware
stand under the old lady's portrait, and everything is going to rack and
ruin. Meantime we wandered around, planning how it could be made over
into use when the revolution comes. Get rid of the idea that China has
had a revolution and is a republic; that point is just where we have
been deceived in the United States. China is at present the rotten
crumbling remnant of the old bureaucracy that surrounded the corruption
of the Manchus and that made them possible. The little Emperor is living
here in his palace surrounded by his eunuchs and his tutors and his two
mothers. He is fourteen and it is really funny to think that they have
just left him Emperor, but as he has not money except what the republic
votes him from year to year, nobody worries about him, unless it is the
Japanese, who want the imperial government restored until they get ready
to take it themselves. It looks as if they might be ready now except for
the nudge which has just been given to the peace conference. You had
better read a book about this situation, for it is the most surprising
affair in a lifetime.

Yesterday we went to see a friend's house. It is interesting and I
should like to live in one like it. There is no water except what the
water man brings every day. This little house has eighteen rooms around
a court. It means four separate roofs and going outdoors to get from one
to another. When the mercury is at twenty below zero it would mean that
just the same. All the ground floors have stone floors. We did not see
all the rooms; there are paper windows in some and glass windows in
some. In summer they put on a temporary roof of mats over the court. It
is higher than the roofs and so allows ventilation and gives good shade.

June 5.

This is Thursday morning, and last night we heard that about one
thousand students were arrested the day before. Yesterday afternoon a
friend got a pass which permitted him to enter the building where the
students were confined. They have filled up the building of Law, and
have begun on the Science building, in consequence of which the faculty
have to go to the Missionary buildings to-day to hold their faculty
meeting. At four yesterday afternoon, the prisoners who had been put in
that day at ten had had no food. One of our friends went out and got the
University to appropriate so