I am sure everyone is sorry for Lady Macdonald, with that enormous mess to keep going. The complaints that people actually have the impertinence to make at her table, loud enough for her to hear, got so bad that one day she rose from her chair and said: “I give you the best I have; I can do nothing better; and, what is more, let me remind you that what is good enough for the British Minister to eat is more than good enough for anybody here.” [Illustration: _Copyright, Pirie MacDonald, New York_ GENERAL A. R. CHAFFEE ] _August 8._ It is just seven weeks to-day since we came here for a few days until the troops should arrive, and food is running very short. There is, moreover scarcely any condensed milk in the compound Another European baby died yesterday, simply from lack of food. It lay in its little coffin looking so white and tired. Out of pity for the mothers the hospital steward makes little rough coffin-boxes for their babies. All mothers who have children and infants who are ill or weak seem fascinated by these pitiful funerals, and they all go to them. There is a good, busy old hen who lays an egg every day. She is given an entire deserted courtyard in the American Legation, a part of which is not in use, and I have fed her personally, or seen that she has been fed, ever since I placed her there at the beginning of the siege. There are three babies here, ranging in age from twelve to eighteen months, who are slowly dying from lack of digestible food, I give an egg to each mother every third day. The eggs are beautifully fresh, and the horror of it all is that these agonized mothers know, and I know, that, could I give the egg to them each day, instead of every third day, their babies could probably live; but as I can’t, I have to divide them, and I cry with the pity of it. Unless the troops come soon it is dreadful to think of the fate of the Chinese Christians in the Fu. Until now we have been able to give them a certain amount of food daily, but we can only spare this supply a few more days. These poor people will be forced to choose between leaving the Fu, with an almost certain chance of massacre, probably of torture, and staying where they are and dying of starvation.