if we could
speak Chinese, which we thought a great joke. I was the first one to
speak, and told them of course we could speak our own language, although
we knew several others. They were very much surprised and said: "Oh!
how funny, they can talk the language as well as we do." We in turn were
very much surprised to find such ignorant people in the Imperial Palace
and concluded that their opportunities for acquiring knowledge were very
limited. Then they told us Her Majesty was waiting to receive us, and we
went immediately.

After walking through three courtyards very similar to those we had
previously passed through, we came to a magnificent building just one
mass of exquisite carving. Large lanterns made of buffalo horns hung all
over the veranda covered with red silk from which red silk tassels were
hanging and from each of these tassels was suspended a beautiful piece
of jade. There were two smaller buildings flanking this large one, also
one mass of carvings and hung with lanterns.

At the door of the large building we met a lady, dressed the same as
Prince Ching's daughters, with the exception that she had a phoenix in
the center of her headdress which distinguished her from the others.
This lady came out to meet us, smiling, and shook hands with us in the
most approved foreign fashion. We were told later that this was the
Young Empress, wife of the Emperor Kwang Hsu. She said: "Her Majesty has
sent me to meet you," and was very sweet and polite, and had beautiful
manners; but was not very pretty. Then we heard a loud voice from the
hall saying, "Tell them to come in at once." We went into this hall
immediately and saw an old lady dressed in a beautiful yellow satin gown
embroidered all over with pink peonies, and wearing the same kind of
headdress with flowers on each side made of pearls and jade, a pearl
tassel on the left side and a beautiful phoenix in the center made of
purest jade. Over her gown she wore a cape, the most magnificent and
costly thing I ever saw. This cape was made of about three thousand five
hundred pearls the size of a canary bird's egg, all exactly alike in
color and perfectly round. It was made on the fish net pattern and had
a fringe of jade pendants and was joined with two pure jade clasps. In
addition to this Her Majesty wore two pairs of pearl bracelets, one
pair of jade bracelets, several jade rings and on her third and little
fingers of her right hand she wore gold finger nail pr