you that everyone must certainly die unless we quickly act. The three
Roman Catholic Cathedrals of Peking, placed at three points of the
compass, are almost strategic centres surrounded by whole lanes and
districts of Catholics captured to the tenets of Christ, or that
portion deemed sufficient for yellow men, in ages gone by. Every
household of these people during the past few weeks has seen
fellow-religionists from the country places running in sorely
distressed in body and mind, and but ill-equipped in money and means
for this impromptu escape to the capital which everyone vainly hopes
generally is to be a sanctuary. The refugees, it is true, do not
receive all the sympathy they expect, for the Peking Catholic being
the oldest and most mature in the eighteen provinces of China, holds
his head very high, and "new people"--that is, those whose families
have only been baptized, let us say, during the nineteenth
century--are somewhat disdained. In a word, the Peking cathedrals and
their Manchu and other adherents are the Blacks; and not even in papal
Rome could this aristocracy in religion be excelled. But although the
newcomers are disdained, their news is not. Everything they say is
believed. The servants, therefore, browsing rumours wherever they go,
bring back a curious hotchpotch after each separate excursion.
Sometimes the balance swings this way, sometimes that; sometimes it is
ominously black, sometimes only cloudy. You never know what it will be
ten minutes hence, and you must content yourself as best you can. Your
body-servant being a Bannerman (my particular one is a Manchu), and
being reasonably young, is also a reservist of the Peking Field Force,
and consorts with other Bannermen who may be actually on guard at one
of the Palace gates. Who passes in and who passes out of the Palace
now spreads like wildfire round the whole city, for the success of the
Boxers will depend upon the support the Peking Government intends to
give them when the worst comes to the worst. And the Peking Government