of China was sealed. When they discovered that Yuan Shih-kai and

the other great viceroys had decided by stratagem to foil the
Boxers even though they must set all the imperial edicts at

naught, they decided, for the sake of the protection of the
legations and the preservation of the empire, that they would do

the same. They secretly sent supplies of food to the besieged,
which the latter feared to use lest they be poisoned. But more

than that they kept their own armies in Peking as a guard and as
a final resort in case there was danger of the legation being

overcome, and as a matter of fact there were regular pitched
battles between the troops of Prince Ching and his associates and

those of the Boxer leader, Tung Fu-hsiang. Had the Boxers finally
succeeded, Yuan Shih-kai and Prince Ching and their associates

would have lost their heads, but as the Boxers failed it was they
who went to their graves by the short process of the

executioner's knife.
So Yuan was between two fires. He had disobeyed the commands of

the Emperor in not coming to Peking and had therefore incurred
his displeasure and caused his downfall. He had disobeyed the

Empress Dowager in not putting to death the foreigners in his
province, and if the Boxers were successful he would surely lose

his head on that account. The Boxers, however, were not
successful and as his disobedience had helped to save the empire,

Yuan, so long as the Dowager remained in power, was safe.
But a day of reckoning must inevitably come. The Empress Dowager

was an old woman, the Emperor was a young man. In all human
probabilities she would be the first to die, while his only hope

was in her outliving the Emperor, who had sworn vengeance on all
those who had been instrumental in his imprisonment.

I have a friend in Peking who is also a friend of one of the
greatest Chinese officials. This official has gone into the

palace daily for a dozen years past and knows every plot and
counterplot that has been hatched in that nest of seclusion

during all that time, though he has been implicated in none of
them. He has held the highest positions in the gift of the empire

without ever once having been degraded. One day when he was in
the palace the Emperor unburdened his heart to him, thinking that

what he said would never reach the ears of his enemies.
"You have no idea," said the Emperor, "what I suffer here."

"Indeed?" was the only reply of the official.
"Yes," continued the Emperor, "I am not allowed to speak to any

one from outside. I am without power, without companions, and
even the eunuchs act as though they are under no obligations to

respect me. The position of the lowest servant in the palace is
more desirable than mine." Then lowering his voice he continued,

"But there is a day of reckoning to come. The Empress Dowager
cannot live forever, and if ever I get my throne again I will see

to it that those who put me here will suffer as I have done."
It is not unlikely that this conversation of the Emperor reached

the ears of Yuan Shih-kai. Walls have ears in China. Everything
has ears, and every part of nature has a tongue. If so, here was

the occasion for the last plot in the drama of the Emperor's
life, and next to the last in the official life of Yuan Shih-kai.

The problem is to so manipulate the laws of nature as to prevent
the Emperor outliving the Empress Dowager, and not allow the

world to know that you have been trifling with occult forces. He
must die a natural death, a death which is above suspicion. He

must not die one day after the Empress Dowager as that would
create talk. And he ought to die some time before her. The death

fuse is one which often burns very much longer than we expect--
was it not one of the English kings who said "I fear I am a very

long time a-dying, gentlemen" --and sometimes it burns out sooner
than is intended. There were two imperial death fuses burning at

the same time in that Forbidden City of Peking. The Empress
Dowager had "had a stroke." Hers was undoubtedly nature's own

work. But the enemies of Yuan Shih-kai tell us that the Emperor
had "had a Chinese doctor," to whom the great Viceroy paid

$33,000 for his services. We are told that the Empress Dowager in
reality died first and then the Emperor, though the Emperor's

death was first announced, and the next day that of the Dowager.
What then are we to infer? That the Emperor was poisoned? Let it

be so. That is what the Japanese believed at the time. But who
did it? Most assuredly no one man. One might have employed a

Chinese physician for him, but the last man whose physician the
Emperor would have accepted would have been Yuan Shih-kai's. Had

you or I been ill would we have allowed the man who was the cause
of our fall to select our physician? But granted that Yuan

Shih-kai did employ his physician, and that his death was the
result of slow poisoning, could Yuan Shih-kai have so manipulated

Prince Ching, the Regent (who is the late Emperor's brother), the
ladies of the court, and all those thousands of eunuchs, to

remain silent as to the death of the Empress Dowager until he had
completed the slow process on His Majesty? No! If the Emperor was

poisoned--and the world believes he was--there are a number of
others whose skirts are as badly stained as those of the great

Viceroy, or long ere this his body would have been sent home a
headless corpse instead of with "rheumatism of the leg."

What then is the explanation? It may be this, that the court, and
the officials as a whole, felt that the Emperor was an unsafe

person to resume the throne, and that it were better that one man
should perish than that the whole regime should be upset. They

even refused to allow a foreign physician to go in to see him,
saying that of his own free will he had turned again to the

Chinese, all of which indicates that it was not the plot of any
one man.

Why then should Yuan Shih-kai have been made the scapegoat of the
court and the officials, and branded as a murderer in the face of

the whole world? That may be another plot. The radicalreformers,
followers of Kang Yu-wei, have been making such a hubbub about

the matter ever since the death of the Emperor and the Empress
Dowager that somebody had to be punished. They said that Yuan had

been a traitor to the cause of reform, that he had not only
betrayed his sovereign in 1898, but that now he had encompassed

his death.
Now to satisfy these enemies, the Prince Regent may have decided

that the best thing to do was to dismiss Yuan for a time. I think
that the trivial excuse he gives for doing so favours my

theory--with "rheumatism of the leg," to which is added, "Thus
our clemency is manifest"--a sentence which may be severe or may

mean nothing, and when the storm has blown over and the sky is
clear again, Yuan may be once more brought to the front as Li

Hung-chang and others have been in the past. Which is a
consummation, I think, devoutly to be wished.

XX
Peking--The City of the Court

The position of Peking at the present time is one of peculiar
interest, for all the different forces that are now at work to

make or mar China issue from, or converge towards, the capital.
There, on the dragonthrone, beside, or rather above, the

powerless and unhappy Emperor, the father of his people and their
god, sits the astute and ever-watchful lady whose word is law to

Emperor, minister and clown alike. There dwell the heads of the
government boards, the leaders of the Manchu aristocracy, and the

great political parties, the drafters of new constitutions and
imperial decrees, and the keen-witted diplomatists who know so

well how to play against European antagonists the great game of
international chess.