slowly.

Even in this matter of Chinese refugees the attitude of our foolish
Legations is rather inexplicable. Actually up to within a few days ago
some of the Ministers were still resolutely refusing to entertain the
idea that native Christians--men who have been estranged from their
own countrymen and marked as pariahs because they have listened to the
white man's gospel--could be brought within the Legation area. In
consequence of this hardly any Chinese Protestants have as yet come
in. Of course circumstance, the force of example, and a timidity in
the face of the growing irritation, have at length broken down this
weak-kneed attitude, but people have not yet finished discussing it.
For instance, there is a remarkable story about the well-known S----,
who wrote that celebrated book, "Chinese Characteristics." He turned
up at the British Legation late one evening, long before the Boxers
entered the Tartar city, and brought positive proof that unless S----
was hurried in we would all be murdered by a conspiracy headed by the
most powerful men. S---- was kept waiting for an hour, and then told
that no time could be spared to see him as everybody was busy writing
despatches! This is indeed our whole situation expressed in a trivial
incident; all the plenipotentiaries are trying to save their positions
and their careers by violent despatch-writing at the eleventh hour.
They know perfectly well that it is they alone who are responsible for
the present _impasse_, and that even if they come out alive they are
all hopelessly compromised. Young O---- told me that in their Legation
they were actually antedating their despatches so as to be on the safe
side! This shows how absolutely inexcusable has been the whole policy
for three entire weeks.

We do not know what is going on around us; we do not know of what the
Peking Court is thinking; we do not know by whom S---- has been
stopped. We know nothing now excepting that we are gradually but
surely getting so dirty that our tempers cannot but be vile. One
never realises how great a part soap and water play in one's scheme of
things until times like these. With upturned Peking carts blocking the
ingresses to our quarter; with everything disgruntled and out of
order; with native Christians crowding in on us, sensible heathen
servants bolting as hard as they can, ice running short, we, the
eleven Legations of Peking, await with some fear and trepidation and
an ever-increasing dis