Isaac Taylor Headland

“ Not until one can see and appreciate the paintings of the old Chinese masters of five hundred years ago hanging upon the walls, the beautiful pieces of the best porcelain of the time of Kang Hsi and Chien Lung, made especially for the palace, arranged in their natural surroundings, on exquisitely carved Chinese tables and brackets, the gorgeously embroided silk portieres over the doorways, and the matchless tapestries which only the Chinese could weave for their greatest rulers, can we appreciate the beauty, the richness, and the refined elegance of the private apartments of the great Dowager. ”

“ It is unnecessary to state that I did not go to sleep while the old nurse was telling the story of the Heavenly River. The child sat on his little stool, his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his hands, listening with open lips and eyes sparkling with interest. To the old nurse it was real. The spinning girl and the cow-herd were living persons. The flowers bloomed,—we could almost smell their odor,—and the gentle breezes seemed to fan our cheeks. She had told the story so often that she believed it, and she imparted to us her own interest. ”

“ She has, in fact, outstripped her nephew. "Long may she live!" "Late may she rule us!" During her lifetime she may be counted on to carry forward the cause she has so ardently espoused. She grasps the reins with a firm hand; and her courage is such that she does not hesitate to drive the chariot of state over many a new and untried road. She knows she can rely on the support of her viceroys—men of her own appointment. She knows too that the spirit of reform is abroad in the land, and that the heart of the people is with her.—W. A. P. Martin in "The Awakening of China." ”

“ When, therefore, the gates of the Forbidden City close behind the young girls who are taken in as concubines of an emperor they shut out an attractive, busy, beautiful world, filled with men and women, boys and girls, homes and children, green fields and rich harvests, and confine them within the narrow limits of one square mile of brick-paved earth, surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high and thirty feet thick, in which there is but one solitary man who is neither father, brother, husband nor friend to them, and whom they may never even see. ”

“ There is no literature in China, not even in the sacred books, which is so generally known as their nursery rhymes. These are understood and repeated by the educated and the illiterate alike; by the children of princes and the children of beggars; children in the city and children in the country and villages, and they produce like results in the minds and hearts of all. The little folks laugh over the Cow, look sober over the Little Orphan, absorb the morals taught by the Mouse, and are sung to sleep by the song of the Little Snail. ”

“ The prospects for a concubine are even less promising than for a serving maid, as when she once enters the palace she has little if any hope of ever leaving it. She is neither mistress nor servant, wife nor slave, she is but one of a hundred buds in a garden of roses which have little if any prospect of ever blooming or being plucked for the court bouquet. ”

“ When the children grow older they have tops to spin that whistle as good a whistle, and buzzers to buzz that buzz as good a buzz, and music balls to roll, and music carts to pull, that emit sounds as much to their satisfaction, as anything that ministered to the childish tastes of our grandfathers; and these become as much a part of their business and their life as if they were living, talking beings. Furthermore, their dolls are as much their children as they themselves are the offspring of their parents.
Chinese toys embrace only those which involve no intricate scientific principles. ”

“ During mid-November of 1908 the Forbidden City of Peking was a blind stage before which an expectant world sat as an audience. It had not long to wait, for on the fifteenth and sixteenth it learned that Kuang Hsu and the Empress Dowager, less than twenty-four hours apart, had taken "the fairy ride and ascended upon the dragon to be guests on high." The world looked on in awe. It expected a demonstration if not a revolution but nothing of the kind happened. ”

“ We all know how this portrait had to be begun on an auspicious day; how a railroad had to be built to the Foreign Office rather than have the portrait carried out on men's shoulders, as though she were dead; how she celebrated her seventieth birthday when she was sixty-nine, to defeat the gods and prevent their bringing such a calamity during the celebration as had occurred when she was sixty, when the Japanese war disturbed her festivities. On her clothes she wore the ideographs for 'Long Life and 'Happiness,' and most of the presents she gave were emblematic of some good fortune. ”

“ Village after village was passed both on his right hand and on his left, and many were the strange sights that met his gaze. The fields became more verdant, the flowers more beautiful, the scenery more gorgeous, and the people more like nymphs and fairies. The color of the clouds and the atmosphere was of a richer, softer hue; while the breezes which wafted his frail bark were milder and gentler than any he had known before.
Despairing at last of reaching the source he stopped at a village where he saw a maiden spinning and a young man leading an ox to drink. ”

“ AS a man, there are few characters in Chinese history that are more interesting than Kuang Hsu. He had all the caprices of genius with their corresponding weakness and strength. He could wield a pen with the vigour of a Caesar, threaten his greatest viceroys, dismiss his leading conservative officials, introduce the most sweeping and far-reaching reforms that have ever been thought of by the Chinese people, and then run from a woman as though the very devil was after him. ”

“ The tricks of sleight-of-hand performers are well-nigh without number. Some of them are easily understood,—surprising, however, to children—and often interesting to grown people, while others are very clever and not so easily understood.
Instead of the hat from which innumerable small packages are taken, the Chinese magician had two hollow cylinders, which exactly fit into each other, that he took out of a box and placed upon a cylindrical chest, and from these two cylinders—each of which he repeatedly showed us as being without top or bottom and empty—he took a dinner of a dozen courses. ”

“ This was the beginning of two important phases of the Empress Dowager's life—her affliction and her power, and her greatness is exhibited as well by the way in which she bore the one as by the way in which she wielded the other. In most cases a woman would have been so overcome by sorrow at the loss of her husband, as to have forgotten the affairs of state, or to have placed them for the time in the hands of others. ”

“ The old philosopher feared that family pride might cause domestic infelicity. The girl on her part steadfastly refused to marry any one else, declaring that unless she married Liang Hung, she would not marry at all. This unexpected constancy touched the old man's heart and he married her. She dressed in the most common clothing, always prepared his food with her own hand, and to show her affection and respect never presented him with the rice-bowl without raising it to the level of her eyebrows, as in the illustration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He has his cash for candy or fruit, his crackers which he fires off at New Year's time, making day a time of unrest, and night hideous. Kite-flying is a pleasure which no American boy appreciates as does the Chinese, a pleasure which clings to him till he is three-score years and ten, for it is not uncommon to find a child and his grandfather in the balmy days of spring flying their kites together. ”

“ They were highly prized by their owners, but I was anxious to know what the Lady Miao thought of her ability as an artist, and so I asked:
"Do you consider the Empress Dowager a good painter?"
"The Empress Dowager is a great woman," she answered. "Of course, as an artist, she is an amateur rather than a professional. Had she devoted herself wholly to art, hers would have been one of the great names among our artists. She wields her brush with a power and precision which only genius added to practice can give. ”

“ Yes, it is selfishness; but life in China is not like ours—a struggle for luxuries—but a struggle, not for bread and rice as many suppose, but for cornmeal and cabbage, or something else not more palatable. This is the life to which most Chinese children are born, and parents can scarcely be blamed for preferring boys whose hands may help provide for their mouths, to girls who are only an expense. ”

“ When I saw the boys in geometry use their queues to strike an arc or draw a circle, it reminded me of my college days when I had forgotten to take a string to class. The laborer spreads a handkerchief or towel over his head, wraps his queue around it and makes for himself a hat. The cart driver whips his mule with it; the beggar uses it to scare away the dogs; the father takes hold of his little boy's queue instead of his hand when walking with him on the street, or the child follows holding to his father's queue, and the boys use it as reins when they play horse. ”

“ The great covered court was converted into a large shrine. One could imagine they were looking into the main hall of a temple, only that everything was so clean and beautiful. From the centre of the shrine a Goddess of Mercy looked down complacently upon the array of fruit, nuts, sweetmeats and cakes spread out before her. Many candles in their tall candlesticks were burning on every side. Before her was a great bronze incense-burner, from which many sticks of incense sent out their fragrant odour on the air. ”

“ The manager beat the drum, the lion stalked about the court, keeping step to the music, turning its large head in every direction and opening and shutting its mouth, much to the amusement of the children.
There is probably no country in the world that has more travelling shows specially prepared for the entertainment of children than China. Scarcely a day passes that we do not hear the drum or the gong of the showmen going to and fro, or standing at our court gate waiting to be called in. ”

“ We know how the British and French marched upon Peking in 1860; how the summer palace was left a heap of ruins as a punishment for the murder of a company of men under a flag of truce; and how the Emperor Hsien Feng, with his wife, and the mother of his only son, our Empress Dowager, were compelled to flee for the first time before a foreign invader. Their refuge was Jehol, a fortified town, in a wild and rugged mountain pass, on the borders of China and Tartary, a hundred miles northeast of Peking. ”

“ We accuse them of doing things backwards, but it is we who deserve such blame because they antedated us in the doing of them. We shake each other's hands, they each shake their own hands. We take off our hats as a mark of respect, they keep theirs on. We wear black for mourning, they wear white. We wear our vests inside, they wear theirs outside. A hundred other things more or less familiar to us all, illustrate this rule. In some of their nursery rhymes everything is said and done on the "cart before the horse" plan. ”

“ Let us try to explain why it was that an imbecile would purchase every book that had been printed in the Chinese language, concerning foreign subjects of learning, up to the time when he was dethroned. Let us tell why it was that an imbecile would study all those foreign books without help, without an assistant, without a teacher, for three years, from the time he bought them in 1895 till 1898, before he began issuing the most remarkable series of edicts that have ever come from the pen of an Oriental monarch in the same length of time. ”

“ The children are dignified little people, but they enjoy all the attractions of child-life as much as other children do.
It is a mistake to suppose that the life of Chinese children is a doleful one. It is understood, of course, that their life is not the same, nor to be compared with that of children in Europe or America; and it should be remembered further that the pleasures of child-life are not measured by the gratification of every childish whim. ”

“ The Chinese woman is commonly regarded as little better than a secluded slave, who whiles away the tedious hours at an embroidery frame, where with her needle she works those delicate and intricate pieces of embroidery for which she is famous throughout the world. In reality, a Chinese lady has little time to give to such work. Her life is full of the most exacting social duties. Few American ladies in the whirl of society in Washington or New York have more social functions to attend or duties to perform. ”

“ They are the tools with which children ply their trades; the instruments with which they carry on their professions; the goods which they buy and sell in their business, and the paraphernalia with which they conduct their toy society. They are more than this. They are the animals which serve them, the associates who entertain them, the children who comfort them and bring joy to the mimic home.
Toys are nature's first teachers. The child with his little shovels, spades and hoes, learns his first lessons in agriculture ”

“ In every company of women that came to call on my wife from 1894 to 1900, there was at least one if not more who had read these books, while the Empress Dowager herself was a brilliant example of what a woman of the old regime could do. Where the desire for education was so great among women, that as soon as it became possible to do so, she launched the first woman's daily newspaper that was published anywhere in the world, with a woman as an editor, we may be sure that there was more than one in ten thousand during the old regime that could read. ”

“ They may be seen on the streets at almost any time, while the temple courts and adjacent streets, on fair days, are crowded with women and girls, dressed in the most gorgeous colours, their hair decorated with all kinds of artificial flowers, followed by little boys and girls as gaily dressed as themselves. Here they find all kinds of toys, curios, and articles of general use, from a top to a broom, from bits of jade or other precious stones, to a snuff bottle hollowed out of a solid quartz crystal, or a market basket or a dust-pan made of reeds. ”

“ XXI The Death of Kuang Hsu and the Empress Dowager Who knows whether the Dowager Empress will ever repose in the magnificent tomb she has built for herself at such a cost, or whether a new dynasty may not rifle its riches to embellish its own? Tze-Hsi is growing old! According to nature's immutable law her faculties must soon fail her; her iron will must bend and her far-seeing eye grow dim, and after her who will resist the tide of foreign aggression and stem the torrent of inward revolt?—Lady Susan Townley in "My Chinese Note Book." ”

“ Prostrate we reflect on how the late Emperor occupied the Imperial Throne for thirty-four years, reverently following the customs of his ancestors, receiving the gracious instruction of the Empress Dowager, exerting himself to the utmost, not failing one day to revere Heaven and observe the laws of his ancestors, devoting himself with diligence to the affairs of government and loving the people, appointing the virtuous to office, changing the laws of the land to make the country powerful, considering new methods of government which arouse the admiration of both Chinese and foreigners. ”

“ The whole empire was aroused to indignation, and even in our Christian schools, every essay, oration, dialogue or debate was a discussion of some phase of the subject, "How to reform and strengthen China." The students all thought, the young reformers all thought, and the foreigners all thought that Kuang Hsu had struck the right track. The great Chinese officials, however, were in doubt, and it was because of their doubt—progressives as well as conservatives—that the Empress Dowager was again called to the throne. ”

“ VIII Kuang Hsu—His Self-Development The Emperor Kuang Hsu is slight and delicate, almost childish in appearance, of pale olive complexion, and with great, melancholy eyes. There is a gentleness in his expression that speaks rather of dreaming than of the power to turn dreams into acts. It is strange to find a personality so etherial among the descendants of the Mongol hordes; yet the Emperor Kuaug Hsu might sit as a model for some Oriental saint on the threshold of the highest beatitude.—Charles Johnston in "The Crisis in China." ”

“ All who have blood and breath cannot but mourn and be moved to the extreme point. We weep tears of blood and beat upon our heart. How can we bear to express our feelings!
"But we think upon our heavy responsibility and our weakness, and we must depend upon the great and small civil and military officials of Peking and the provinces to show public spirit and patriotism, and aid in the government. The viceroys and governors should harmonize the people and arrange carefully methods of government to comfort the spirit of the late Emperor in heaven. ”

“ The first Empress was a pampered daughter of wealth, neither vigorous of body nor strong of mind, caring nothing for political power if only she might have ease and comfort, and there is nothing that exhibits the Empress Dowager's real greatness more convincingly than the fact that she was able to live for thirty years the more fortunate mother of her country's ruler, and, in power, the mistress of her superior, without arousing the latter's envy, jealousy, anger, or enmity. ”

“ One of the most attractive of all my Chinese lady friends and patients is the niece of the great Viceroy, Li Hung-chang, the daughter of his brother, Li Han-chang, who is himself a viceroy. I have been her physician for eighteen years or more and hence have become intimately acquainted with her. She has visited me very often in my home and, of all the women I have ever known, of any race or people, I have never met one whom I thought more cultured or refined than she. ”

“ Ruling over a conquered race, she must always be watching out for signs of discontent and rebellion; being herself the daughter of a poor man, and beginning as only the concubine of an emperor, and he but a weak character, she must be alert for dissatisfaction on the part of the princes who might have some title to the throne. She must watch the governors in the distant provinces and the viceroys who are in charge of great armies, that they do not direct them against instead of in defense of the throne. ”

“ While this was going on, fire was applied to various parts of the paper pile, and in a moment a great flame sprang up into the air—a flame that could be seen from miles around, and in less time than it takes to tell it the whole was a heap of glowing ashes, the mourners had departed, and the little street children were stirring it up with long sticks. ”

“ When the eunuch got down on his hands and knees to kotow or knock his head to His Majesty, the latter kicked him in the mouth, cutting his lip and otherwise injuring him, and my informant added:
"What kind of a man is that to govern a country, a man who punishes those who obey his orders?" Indeed there was a good deal of feeling among the Chinese at that time that the Empress Dowager ought to punish the Emperor as a good mother does a bad child, though in the light of all the other things he did, he was to be pitied more than blamed for a disposition thus inherited and developed. ”