The city is bright with the fires started by the rabble.  The yellow roofs, the pink walls and the towering marble pagodas catch the reflection of the flames, making a scene of barbaric splendor that would reduce the burning of Rome to a feeble little bonfire.

The pitiful, the awful and the very funny are so intermixed, my face is fatally twisted trying to laugh and cry at the same time.  Right across from my window, on the street curbing, a Chinaman is getting a hair-cut.  In the midst of all the turmoil, hissing bullets and roaring mobs, he sits with folded hands and closed eyes as calm as a Joss, while a strolling barber manipulates a pair of foreign shears.  For him blessed freedom lies not in the change of Monarchy to Republic, but in the shearing close to the scalp the hated badge of bondage—­his pigtail.

And, Mate, the first thing the looters do when they enter a house is to snatch down the telephones and take them out to burn; for, as one rakish bandit explained, they were the talking-machines of the foreign devils and, if left, might reveal the names of the looters!

High-born ladies with two-inch feet stumble by, their calcimined faces streaked with tears and fright.  Gray-haired old men shiver with terror and try to hide in any small corner.  Lost children and deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot.  And through it all, the mob runs and pitilessly mows down with sword and knife as it goes, and plunders and sacks till there is nothing left.

As I stood watching only a part of this horror, I heard a long-haired brother near me say, as he kept well under cover, “Inscrutable Providence!” But (my word!) I don’t think it fair to lay it all on Providence.

So far the foreign Legations have been well guarded.  But there is no telling how long the overworked soldiers can hold out.  When they cannot, the Lord help the least one of us.

Jack’s friends are working day and night, guarding their property.

I guess the Seeker found more of the plain unvarnished Truth in the East than he bargained for.  He and Dolly have disappeared from Peking.

Nobody undresses these nights and few go to bed.  Our bodyguard is the room-boy.  I asked him which side he was on, and without a change of feature he answered, “Manchu Chinaman.  Allee samee bimeby, Missy, I make you tea.”  I have a suspicion that he sleeps across our door, for his own or our protection, I am not sure which; but sometimes, when the terrible howls of fighters reach me, as I doze in a chair, I turn on the light and sit by my fire to shake off a few shivers, trying to make believe I ’m home in Kentucky, while Jack sleeps the sleep of the convalescent.  Then a soft tap comes at my door and a very gentle voice says, “Missy, I make you tea.”  Shades of Pekoe!  I ’ll drown if this keeps up much longer.  He comes in, brews the leaves, then drops on his haunches