In the British Legation time has even been found to establish a model laundry, and several able-bodied men actually fought for the privilege of supervising it, they say, when the idea was mooted.

Neither have our Ministers improved by the seasoning process of the siege.  Most of them have become so ridiculous, that they shun the public eye, and listen to the roar of the rifles from safe places which cannot be discovered.  And yet fully half of them are able-bodied men, who might do valuable work; who might even take rifles and shoot.  But it is they who give a ridiculous side, and for that, at least, one should be thankful.  It is something to see P——­, the French Minister, starting out with his whole staff, all armed with fusils de chasse, and looking tres sportsman on a tour of inspection when everything is quiet.  Each one is well told by his tearful wife to look out for the Boxers, to be on the alert—­as if Chinese banditti were lurking just outside the Legation base to swallow up these brave creatures!—­and in a compact body they sally forth.  These are the married men:  marriage excuses everything when the guns begin to play.  Thus the Secretary of Legation, whose name I will not divulge even with an initial, amused me immensely yesterday by calculating how much more valuable he was to the State as a father of a family than an unmarried youngster like myself.  He tried to prove to me that if he died the economic value of his children would suffer—­what a fool he was!—­and that my own value capitalised after the manner of mathematicians was very small.  I listened to him carefully, and then asked if the difference between a brave man and a coward had any economic significance.  He became suddenly angry and left me.  Some of the besieged are becoming truly revolting.

Even P——­, who some people think ought to stay in the remains of his own Legation, is rather disgusted, and as he marches out in an embroidered nightshirt, with little birds picked out in red thread on it, he is not as absurd as I first thought.  Poor man, he is attempting to do his duty after his own lights, and excepting two or three others, he has been the most creditable of all the elderly men, who think that position excuses everything.

Labouring at the making of sandbags, the women sit under shelter, and keep company with those men who have not the stomach to go out.  And as shells have been falling more and more frequently in and around this safe base, and rumour has told them that the outer lines may give way, bomb-proof shelters have been dug in many quarters ready to receive all those who are willing to crouch for hours to avoid the possibility of being hit....