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. * * * * * We are beginning to call them Boxers--grudgingly and sometimes harking back and giving them their full name, "Society of Harmonious Fists," or the "Righteous Harmony Fist Society"; but still a beginning has been made, and they are becoming Boxers by the inevitable process of shortening which distinguishes speech. have been talking about them a good deal to-day, these Boxers, since it has been the birthday of her most excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, and the British Legation has been _en fete_. Her Majesty's Minister, in fine, has been entertaining us in the vast and princely gardens of the British Legation at his own expense. Weird Chinese lanterns have been lighted in the evening and slung around the grounds; champagne has been flowing with what effervescence it could muster; the eleven Legations and the nondescripts have forgotten their cares for a brief space and have been enjoying the evening air and the music of Sir R---- H----'s Chinese band. Looking at lighted lanterns, drinking champagne cup, listening to a Chinese band--where the devil is the protocol and the political situation, you will say? Not quite forgotten, since the French Minister attracted the attention of many all the evening by his vehement manner. I pushed up once, too, and with a polite bow listened to what he was saying. Ah, the old words, the eternal words, the political situation, or the _situation politique_, whichever way you like to use them. But still you listen a bit, for it is droll to hear the yet unaccustomed word Boxers in French. "_Les Boxeurs_," he says; and what the French Minister says is always worth listening to, since he has the best Intelligence corps in the world--the Catholic priests of China--at his disposal. Curiously enough, he was speaking of the arch-priest of priests, renowned above all others in this Peking world, Monseigneur F----, Vicar Apostolic of the Manchu capital--almost Vicar of God to countless thousands of dark-yellow converts. It is Monseigneur F----'s letter of the 19th May, written but five days ago, and already locally famous through leakage, which was the subject-matter of his impromptu oration. Monseigneur F---- wrote and demanded a guard of marines for his cathedral, his people and his chattels--_quarante ou cinquante marins pour proteger nos personnes et nos biens_, were his exact words, and his request has been cruelly refused by the Council of Min
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