duty ten days of each month. As I was deeply interested in the
study of Chinese art I became intimately acquainted with most of
the court painters and knew the character of their work. The head
of this group was Mr. Kuan. I called on him one day, knowing that
he was not well enough to be on duty in the palace, and I found
him hard at work. Like the small boy who told his mother that he
was too sick to go to school but not sick enough to go to bed, so
he assured me that his troubles were not such as to prevent his
working, but only such as make it impossible for him to appear at
court. Incidentally I learned that the drain on his purse from
the squeezes to the eunuchs aggravated his disease.

"When Her Majesty excused me from appearing at the palace," he
explained, "she required that I paint for her a minimum of sixty
pictures a year, to be sent in about the time of the leading
feasts. These she decorates with her seals, and with appropriate
sentiments written by members of the College of Inscriptions, and
she gives them, as she gives her own, as presents during the
feasts." Mr. Kuan and I became intimate friends and he painted
three pictures which he presented to me for my collection.

One day another of the court painters came to call on me and
during the conversation told me that he was painting a picture of
the Empress Dowager as the goddess of mercy. Up to that time I
had not been accustomed to think of her as a goddess of mercy,
but he told me that she not infrequently copied the gospel of
that goddess with her own pen, had her portrait painted in the
form of the goddess which she used as a frontispiece, bound the
whole up in yellow silk or satin and gave it as a present to her
favourite officials. Of course I thought at once of my collection