We stopped long enough at Seoul, Korea, to talk to representatives of
trade and commerce and to chat with the "Grand Old Man of Korea," before
arriving in Peking.



Chapter VII



Our stay in three-thousand year-old Peking was too short, for besides
investigating conditions, attending our Minister Shurman's reception,
visiting the country home of the former Prime Minister Hsuing Hsi-Ling,
we would have enjoyed spending more time seeing The Summer Palace, The
Jade Fountain and the Temple of Heaven to say nothing of studying
conditions.

About one-thirty, when the gay dance had ended at Hotel de Peking, which
by the way, would be a credit to London or New York, we took an hour's
rickshaw ride in the moonlight to the Forbidden City. The solemn
pom-pom-pom of the funeral dirge for the Mother of the heir to the
Chinese Throne, was indescribably impressive. About eighty men bore the
casket from the dwelling to its canopied hearse. One of the mourner's
told us that the fourteen-year-old heir to the throne, had not cared
much, when all his playthings were taken from him, or even when his
throne was taken, but that now he was inconsolable over the loss of his
mother.

After seeing this weird funeral procession of the last of the Ming