Then, too, it has been an interesting study to watch the effects on the optimistic man and the pessimistic man of the various rumors that have drifted in through occasional reports from captives or deserters from the enemy’s troops.
The optimist believes that our enemies are discouraged, are short of ammunition, are fighting among themselves, are firing high purposely not to injure us; that the relief force is very near, that flashes of heat lightning are search-lights of our friends, etc.
The pessimist believes the powers are fighting among themselves to prevent relief until no one power has more troops in the relief than any other; scouts the idea of search-lights; says that the provisions are nearly exhausted; sees new barricades erected by the enemy every night; recounts the fatal casualties, increasing each day, and notes the diminishing strength of the remainder, and, moreover, fully believes and constantly asserts that we are only staving off for a little while an inevitable general massacre.
One must admit that to know that eleven of the powers of the world are kept away, or are staying away, from relieving their ministers, with their families and nationals, for two months, at a distance of only eighty miles from navigation by large vessels, is a circumstance rather calculated to increase pessimism.
A WOMAN OF NORTH CHINA
It is not easy to obtain pictures of the women of the upper classes of China. The beautiful cape with the elaborate embroidery, the little feet mounted upon pedestals, and that sign of high nobility, the long finger nails, shown by nail protectors on the third and fourth fingers of the left hand, are evidences that this woman is of China’s “four hundred.”
Before the siege began I heard the United States minister say that if the Boxers destroyed a single station on the Peking-Hankow railroad, known popularly as the Lu Han road, they would have a horde of Cossacks protecting the line within a fortnight. Yet of the 15,000 Russians reported to have been in Port Arthur, when the entire Lu Han line and the Peking-Tientsin railroad was destroyed, not a man has as yet (August 13th) reached Peking. The Boxers are still seen from our loopholes, and make our nights hideous with their horn-blowing and incessant rifle-fire.
We were also told by those wiseacres, the foreign ministers, that Japan could and would have 50,000 men in Peking if one member of their legation was injured. Their second and third secretaries have been killed, their legation guard has been almost annihilated, and we see, as yet, no new Japanese faces.
Again, Captain Myers assured us the Americans could easily spare 10,000 men from the Philippines, who could reach Peking in, at longest, two weeks; but two months have now gone by, and they have not materialized.