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. [Illustration: 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. The people who have, on the whole, stood the siege best are the missionaries. They have been more crowded than any others, all the Americans being compelled to occupy the British legation chapel, where they are, indeed, closely packed, while the English missionaries occupy part of the first secretary’s house. The Americans have formed into two messes, the Presbyterians and Methodists eating at one time, the Congregationalists, who are in the majority, at another. They brought in with them considerable provisions in the way of tinned stores, but have been compelled to draw from their commissariat their supply of rice and cracked wheat every day. The foreign ministers guaranteed the three shopkeepers of Peking, Messrs. Krueger, of Kierullf & Co., Imbeck, and Chamot, the amount of their stock if they would turn it into a commissary’s hands for distribution to the entire community as needed. This was at once done, and a commissary department appointed to take charge.