ice this virtue. Thus your knowledge
will be practical and your talents useful."

I have given these quotations as evidences of the breadth of the man
whom the Empress Dowager selected as the head of this commission. It is
not generally known, however, that Duke Tse, another important member
of this commission, is married to a sister of the young Empress
Yehonala, and consequently a niece of the Empress Dowager. Such
relations existed between Her Majesty and the viceroy, as ruler and
subject, that it would be impossible for him to give her the intimate
account of their trip that a relative could give. It would be equally
impossible, with all her other duties, to wade through a report such as
they published after their return of one hundred and twenty volumes.
But it would be a delight to call in this nephew-in-law, and have him
sit or kneel, and may we not believe she allowed him to sit? and give
her a full and intimate account of the trip and the countries through
which they passed. She was anxious that this constitution should be
given to the people before she passed away. This, however, could not
be. Whether it will be adopted within the time allotted is a question
which the future alone can answer.

The next great reform undertaken by the Empress Dowager was her crusade
against opium. The importance of this can only be estimated when we
consider the prevalence of the use of the drug throughout the empire.
The Chinese tell us that thirty to forty per cent. of the adult
population are addicted to the use of the drug.

One day while walking along the street in Peking, I passed a gateway
from which there came an odour that was not only offensive but
sickening. I went on a little distance further and entered one of the
best curio shops of the city, and going into the back room, I found the
odour of the street emphasized tenfold, as one of the employees of the
firm had just finished his smoke. I left this shop and went to another
where the proprietor had entirely ruined his business by his use of the
drug, and it was about this time that the Empress Dowager issued the
following edict:

"Since the first prohibition of opium, almost the whole of China has
been flooded with the poison. Smokers of opium have wasted their time,
neglected their employment, ruined their constitutions, and
impoverished their households. For several decades therefore China has
presented a spectacle of increasing poverty and weakness. To merely