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And it was such conduct as this on the part of three Chinese and one Manchu viceroys that saved China from being divided up among the Powers in 1900, a fact which the Empress Dowager was not slow to understand and reward. In 1900 Yuan was made Governor of the Shantung province, and the court was compelled to flee to Hsian.

In Hsian, books have been purchased by all classes from the governor of the province down to the humblest scholar, and the aristocracy have organized classes, and are inviting the foreigners to lecture to them. Every one, except a few of the oldest conservative scholars, are discarding their Confucian theories and reconstructing their ideas in view of present day problems.

"We remained with my uncle until the close of the Boxer trouble, and until my grandfather's return from Hsian where he had gone with the Empress Dowager and the court, and then I came back to Peking." "Your grandmother must have felt ashamed when she heard how hard it had gone with you," I remarked. "We never mentioned the matter when talking together.

There is nothing to wonder at that Kuang Hsu, without parental restraint, and fawned upon by cringing eunuchs and serving maids, should have been a spoiled child; the wonder is that he was not worse than he was. One day in 1901 while the court was absent at Hsian, and the front gate of the Forbidden City was guarded by our "boys in blue," I obtained a pass and visited the imperial palace.

From their exile in Hsian decrees continued to be issued in his name, and when affairs began to be adjusted, and the allies insisted on setting aside forever the pretentions of the anti-foreign Prince Tuan and his son, banishing the former to perpetual exile, our hopes ran high that the Emperor would be restored to his throne.

In June, 1902, soon after the return of the court from Hsian to Peking, a company of ladies from the various legations in Peking who had received invitations to an audience and a banquet with the Empress Dowager were asked to meet at one of the legations for the purpose of consultation. The meeting was unusual.