give me a string of difficult words for the accent and to improve my enunciation, as the French teach the children, “ Trois gros rats dans trois gros trous. ” When I would finally get quite tangled up with these words I would retaliate with “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” This would end the lesson for that day, for they would all try to say it and get so hilarious that there was no effort at further study, and dinner would be announced in the midst of the fun.
Sometimes the young Empress and the Ladies would play cards in the evenings. Her Majesty seemed only to like her fairy game! The cards were narrow slips of pasteboard with curious devices on each, but little more than an inch wide, and there were one hundred and fifty in a pack. I never succeeded in getting into the merits of the game. Sometimes when the Ladies felt industriously inclined, they would weave a kind of braid. The threads, gold, silver, or silk, were attached to the center of a wooden table and were weighted at the ends. They would weave these in and out into cunningly fashioned braids and ribbons. The Princesses did a great deal of beautiful embroidery, making their own shoes, which are of exquisitely embroidered satin, but they could not do this at night, for only candles are used in the two Peking Palaces, the Summer Palace being the only one in China lighted by electricity.
One night at dinner the young Empress asked me to come earlier than usual the next morning, as there was something she wished me to see. Several eunuchs were waiting at the gate of the Palace to conduct us to the young Empress when we arrived at nine o’clock the next morning, and I then learned this was her Birthday. I hurried in and found the Imperial Princess and all the Ladies of the Palace, besides a number of visitors, standing in front of the young Empress’s pavilion. They told me she had asked them to wait to present their congratulations until I came, and said that I was to go in first. I did so, and there, on a throne, sat the young Empress in full Court dress, wearing the Court coiffure, with its veil of pearls, which was most becoming to her narrow patrician face. She