to carve designs
and characters on the cut trees, Her Majesty assisting. These were
afterwards made into chairs, tables and other useful articles for Her
Majesty's teahouse. During the long Autumn evenings Her Majesty would
teach us Chinese history and poetry and every tenth day would put us
through an examination in order to find out how much we had learned,
prizes being awarded for proficiency. The younger eunuchs also took part
in these lessons and some of their answers to Her Majesty's questions
were very amusing. If Her Majesty were in a good humor she would laugh
with the rest of us, but sometimes she would order them to be punished
for their ignorance and stupidity. However, as they were quite
accustomed to being punished they did not seem to mind very much and
forgot all about it the next minute.

As Her Majesty's seventieth birthday was approaching the Emperor
proposed to celebrate this event on an unusually grand scale, but Her
Majesty would not give her consent to this proposal on account of the
war trouble, for fear people might comment on it. The only difference,
therefore, between this birthday and former ones was that Her Majesty
gave presents to the Court, in addition to receiving them. These
included the bestowal of titles, promotions and increases in salary.
Among the titles conferred by Her Majesty, my sister and myself received
the title of Chun Chu Hsien (Princess). These titles, however, were
confined to members of the Court, and were granted specially by the
Empress Dowager. Similar promotions to outside officials were always
conferred by the Emperor. It was proposed to hold the celebrations in
the Forbidden City as it was more suited for such an important
event. However, Her Majesty did not like this idea at all, and gave
instructions that the Court should not be moved until three days before
the 10th of the tenth moon, the date of her birthday. This entailed a
lot of unnecessary work as it necessitated decorating both the Summer
Palace and the Forbidden City. Everything was hurry and bustle. To add
to this, it snowed very heavily during the few days previous to the
tenth. Her Majesty was in a very good mood. She was very fond of being
out in the snow and expressed a wish to have some photographs taken
of herself on the hillside. So my brother was commanded to bring his
camera, and took several very good pictures of Her Majesty.

On the seventh day the Court moved into the Forbidden City and th