ine or flood. I noticed that he
felt for them. I know that some eunuchs gave false reports about his
character,--that he was cruel, etc. I had heard the same thing before
I went to the Palace. He was kind to the eunuchs, but there was always
that distinction between the master and the servants. He would never
allow the eunuchs to speak to him unless they were spoken to, and never
listened to any kind of gossip. I lived there long enough, and I know
just what kind of cruel people those eunuchs were. They had no respect
for their master. They came from the lowest class of people from the
country, had no education, no morals, no feeling for anything, not even
between themselves. The outside world has heard so many things against
His Majesty, the Emperor Kwang Hsu's character, but I assure my readers
that these things were told by the eunuchs to their families, and of
course they always stretched it out as far as possible in order to
make the conversation interesting. The majority of the people living in
Peking get all kinds of information through them. I have witnessed the
same thing many a time during my stay at the Palace.

One day during the time of Her Majesty's afternoon rest we heard a
dreadful noise. It sounded just like the firing off of fire-crackers.
Such a noise was quite unusual in the Palace for such things are not
allowed to be brought into the Palace grounds. Of course Her Majesty
woke up. In a few seconds time everyone became excited and were running
to and fro as if the building was on fire. Her Majesty was giving orders
and telling the eunuchs to be quiet, but no one listened to her and kept
yelling and running around like crazy people, all talking at the same
time. Her Majesty was furious and ordered us to bring the yellow bag
to her. (I must explain about this bag. It was made of ordinary yellow
cloth and contained bamboo sticks of all sorts and sizes and are made to
beat the eunuchs, servant girls and old women servants with.) This
bag was carried everywhere Her Majesty went, to be handy in case of
emergency. Everyone of us knew where this bag was kept. We took all the
sticks from the bag and Her Majesty ordered us to go to the courtyard
and beat the eunuchs. It was such a funny sight to see all the Court
ladies and servant girls each with a stick trying to separate the
excited crowd. On my part I thought I was having good fun so I laughed
and found the rest were laughing too. Her Majesty was standing o