But, honey, bury me deep when there isn’t a smile lurking around the darkest corner.  Neither war nor famine can wholly eliminate the comical.  Yesterday afternoon some audacious youngsters asked me to chaperon a tea-party up the river.  We went in a gaily decorated house-boat, made tea on a Chinese stove of impossible shape, and ate cakes and sandwiches innumerable.  Aglow with youth and its joys, reckless of danger, courting adventure, the promoters of the enterprise failed to remember that we were outside the city walls, that the gates were closed at sunset and nothing but a written order from an official could open them.  We had no such order.  When it was quite dark, we faced entrances doubly locked and barred.  The guardian inside might have been dead for all he heeded our importunities and bribes.  At night outside the huge pile of brick and stone, inclosing and guarding the city from lawless bandits, life is not worth a whistle.  A dismayed little giggle went round the crowd of late tea revelers as we looked up the twenty-five feet of smooth wall topped by heavy battlements.  Just when we had about decided that our only chance was to stand on each other’s shoulders and try to hack out footholds with a bread knife, some one suggested that we try the effect of college yells on the gentlemen within.  Imagine the absurdity of a dozen terrified Americans standing there in the heart of China yelling in unison for Old Eli, and Nassau, and the Harvard Blue!

The effect was magical.  Curiosity is one of the strongest of Oriental traits, and before long the gates creaked on their hinges and a crowd of slant-eyed, pig-tailed heads peered wonderingly out.  The rest was easy, and I heard a great sigh of relief as I marshaled my little group into safety.

Jack’s many friends here in Peking are determined that I shall have as good a time as possible.  Worried by disorganized business, harassed with care, they always find opportunity not only to plan for my pleasure but see that I have it, properly attended—­for of course Jack is not yet able to leave his room.

Beyond the power of any man is the prophecy of what may happen to official-ridden Peking.  The air is surcharged with mutterings.  The brutally oppressed people may turn at last, rise, and, in their fury, rend to bits all flesh their skeleton fingers grasp.

The Legations grouped around the hotel are triply guarded.  The shift, shift, shift of soldiers’ feet as they march the streets rubs my nerves like sandpaper.

Rest and sleep are impossible.  We seem constantly on the edge of a precipice, over which, were we to go, the fate awaiting us would reduce the tortures of Hades to pin-pricks.  The Revolutionists have the railroads, the bandits the rivers.  Yet, if I don’t reach Japan in twelve days now, I will be too late.  Poor Sada San!