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She was at that time seriously considering whether or not the government should cast in its lot with the Boxers and drive all the foreigners with all their productions into the eastern sea. One of the princesses told Mrs. Headland that before coming to a decision the Empress Dowager called the hereditary and imperial princes into the palace to consult with them as to what they would better do.
We left York at twelve o'clock, and were delayed an hour or two at Leeds, waiting for a train. I strolled up into the town, and saw a fair, with puppet-shows, booths of penny actors, merry-go-rounds, clowns, boxers, and other such things as I saw, above a year ago, at Greenwich fair, and likewise at Tranmere, during the Whitsuntide holidays.
Oh, I see that we are absurd and can only be made more ridiculous by coming events. Of course the Boxers coming in openly through the gates cannot be true, and yet shades of Genghis Khan and all his Tartars, what is that?
Economic distresses, bad crops, a disastrous flood and hatred of foreign missionaries, combined with a deep resentment at the European partition of their country, caused the Chinese to break out in a score of scattered attacks on the hated aliens. The culmination was the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers was a society which had long existed in China for various religious, patriotic and other purposes.
A strange, sweet wind freighted with stray bird-notes wandered aimlessly. Nothing was said. Dick led the way and set the intervals of the carrying. When he swung the canoe from his shoulders the others slipped their tump-lines. Then all rubbed their faces with the broad caribou-leaf to keep off the early flies, and lay back, arms extended, breathing deep, resting like boxers between the rounds.
In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to relieve the legations against some hundreds of thousands of Boxers, Captain Bowman McCalla and his Americans worked with Admiral Seymour and his Britons in the most trying and picturesque adventure of its kind in modern history.
"I didn't mean either of the boxers," said the little priest. "Well, well, well!" said the nobleman, with a touch of frosty humour. "Who's going to be killed? The referee?" "I don't know who's going to be killed," replied Father Brown, with a reflective stare. "If I did I shouldn't have to spoil your pleasure. I could simply get him to escape. I never could see anything wrong about prize-fights.
A parcel of bill-stealers, boxers, any rascals, get his money; and he don't scruple to throw an honest fellow over. Would you believe it, sir, he took money of Altamont you know whom I mean." "Indeed? of that singular man, who I think came tipsy once to Sir Francis's house?" Major Pendennis said, with impenetrable countenance. "Who is Altamont, Mr. Strong?"
The wrestlers, too, do the same when they are training; and the boxers, when they aim a blow with the cestus at their adversary, give a groan, not because they are in pain, or from a sinking of their spirits, but because their whole body is put upon the stretch by the throwing-out of these groans, and the blow comes the stronger.
Then it was that the foreign admirals captured the forts, in order to bring relief to our foreign community. That step the Chinese Foreign Office pronounced an act of war, and ordered the legations and all other foreigners to quit the capital. The ministers remonstrated, knowing that on the way we could not escape being butchered by Boxers.
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