14th June, 1900.

* * * * *

I had risen yesterday some what late in the day with the oddness and
uncomfortableness--I do not mean discomfort--which comes from too much
boots, too much disturbance of one's ordinary routine, too much
listening to people airing their opinions and recounting rumours, and,
last of all, very wearied by the uncustomary task of transporting a
terrible battery of hand artillery (for we are at last all heavily
armed); and consequent of these varied things, I, like everybody else,
was a good deal out of temper and rather sick of it all. I began to
ask myself this question: Were we really playing an immense comedy, or
was there a great and terrible peril menacing us? I could never get
beyond asking the question. I could not think sanely long enough for
the answer.

The day passed slowly, and very late in the afternoon, when some of us
had completed a tour of the Legations, and looked at their various
picquets, I finished up at the Austrian Legation and the Customs
Street. Men were everywhere sitting about, idly watching the dusty and
deserted streets, half hoping that something was going to happen
shortly, when suddenly there was a shout and a fierce running of feet.
Something had happened.

We all jumped up as if we had been shot, for we had been sitting very
democratically on the sidewalk, and round the corner, running with
the speed of the scared, came a youthful English postal carrier. That
was all at first.