Puslapio vaizdai
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As I look back down a long vista of memories, in which M'Quigg and old Kuan figure against a dim background of ever-shifting scenes, my thoughts generally turn, sooner or later, to certain redletter days and nights, which stand out clearly from the level monotone of our exotic existence at Peking, like trees beside a long and dusty road. One of these I remember with especial vividness of detailthe 15th of November 1908, a day that left its mark on China's history. On the previous day rumour, thousandtongued, had run, swiftly spreading, from the Imperial City. The Son of Heaven, by all accounts, was dead. Many and various were the versions given of the death-bed scene, some (concocted for, or by, foreign journalists) obviously fantastic, others plausible VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCXCIX.

enough, but all alike imbued with the atmosphere of mystery and awe essential to the Oriental mind on such occasions. From all these rumours there gradually emerged the melancholy fact that in his lonely pavilion of the "Ocean Terrace," brow-beaten and friendless to the last, his Majesty Kuang Hsü had come to his end, seen off on that long journey by the ruthless old Dowager and by his own grim, forbidding Consort. His death, of course, had not been unexpected. For several days edicts had reported the coming and going of famous physicians, and on the 13th, the Empress Dowager had appointed Prince Ch'un Regent and his infant son Heir Apparent. Also, ever since the Old Buddha had deprived him of all power and dignity after the coup-d'état of '98, he had been so often re

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