So much for the outside officers. Among civilians deserving credit are many who have daily and faithfully done the work apportioned to them in capacities where they have been unnoticed, but where their work has contributed much to the general comfort, and some of them at least should be mentioned. Messrs. Allardyce and Brazier in the meat supply department, Mr. S. M. Russell in the commissary department, Mr. Stell in the coolie supply department, Dr. Chauncey Goodrich and Messrs. Walker and Whiting in the coolies’ food supply, together with Messrs. Tewkesbury, Hobart, and Norris, all have steadily worked for the common good, often both day and night. It has been noticed by a great many Englishmen and others that the Russians besieged with us have been of uniformly gentlemanly and courteous bearing. They have won golden opinions from all, with the exception, perhaps, of one intensely biased newspaper correspondent, who reads in the most commonplace saying some deeply-concealed meaning, and some unkind intention toward the British interests. A Russian gentleman is a perfect gentleman, and uniformly a marvelous linguist. I have several times been present in a room with a Frenchman, a German, and an Italian, with whom several Russians carried on animated conversations, addressing each man in his own language, and apparently with equal fluency. From M. de Giers, down through his whole legation, the professors of Russian in the Imperial University and Tung Wen Kuan, the officers and clerks of the Russo-Chinese bank, one can find none who are not perfect gentlemen and most agreeable companions. Baron von Radew, the captain in charge of the Russian marines, has been a most devoted officer, and every point of his defenses has had his constant personal supervision. He has never undressed to sleep in the last two months, but has taken the broken rest he has obtained lying in a steamer chair in one of his barricades. He has lost greatly in flesh, and is but a skeleton of his former self, but remains the same courteous officer and gentleman under circumstances that have altered the dispositions of not a few. [Illustration: HOUSE BOATS Used for interior travel on Chinese rivers. Families pass their entire existence on these boats. Some are fitted very comfortably.] If the diplomatic corps in Peking could only have heard the many and varied contemptuous remarks made about them by their own nationals, both before and during the siege, they would perhaps have a new idea of what their titles of “envoys extraordinary” meant. As I heard one gentleman remark: “After this lot are disposed of, I hope they will send us a set of ‘envoys ordinary’—common-sense kind of men, who have eyes and ears.”