VI

THE LICKING FLAMES APPROACH


9th June 1900.

* * * * *

It is getting desperate, of that there is now no shadow of doubt. The
Tientsin trains that have been lately running more and more slowly and
irregularly, as if they, too, were waiting on the pleasure of the
coming storm, are going to run no more, and the odds are heavily
against to-day's train ever reaching its destination. It is true these
trains have long ceased running as far as we are personally concerned,
for the weariness of living forty-two hours during twenty-four dulls
one's perception of everything excepting one's immediate surroundings.
And even one's surroundings are somehow shrinking until they will soon
be but the four walls of a courtyard. But about the trains--why are
they stopping? Because the licking flames are approaching so near that
they will soon overwhelm all who are concerned with the running of
trains unless they disappear very nimbly. One of the Chinese railway
managers, an educated man in the Western sense who can quote
Shakespeare, has been all over Legation Street yesterday and to-day,
pointing out the hopelessness of the general position and almost
openly urging the Legations to call on Europe to take steps. General