This was rather amusingly illustrated at a dinner given by the late Major Conger, American minister to China. Major and Mrs. Conger introduced many innovations into the social life of Peking, and none more important than the dinners and luncheons given to the princes and high officials, and also to the princesses and ladies of the court. In 1904, I was invited to dine with Major Conger and help entertain Prince Chun, Prince Pu Lun, Prince Ching, Governor Hu, Na T'ung, and a number of other princes and officials of high rank. I sat between Prince Chun and Governor Hu. Having met them both on several former occasions, I was not a stranger to either of them, and as they were well acquainted with each other, though one was a Manchu prince and the other a Chinese official, conversation was easy and natural. We talked, of course, in Chinese only, of the improvements and advantages that railroads bring to a country, for Governor Hu, among other things, was the superintendent of the Imperial Railways of north China. This led us to speak of the relative comforts of travel by land and by sea, for Prince Chun had gone half round the world and back. We listened to the American minister toasting the young Emperor of China, his princes, and his subjects; and then to Prince Ching toasting the young President of the United States, his officials, and his people, in a most dignified and eloquent manner. And then as the buzz of conversation went round the table again, and perhaps because of their having spoken of the YOUNG Emperor and the young President, I turned to Governor Hu, who had an unusually long, white beard which reached almost to his waist as he sat at table, and said: "Your Excellency, what is your honourable age?" "I was seventy years old my last birthday," he replied. "And he is still as strong as either of us young men," said I, turning to Prince Chun. "Oh, yes," said the Prince; "he is good for ten years yet, and by that time he can use his beard as an apron." "It is an ill wind that blows no one good," says the proverb, and this was never more forcibly illustrated than in the case of the death of the lamented Baron von Kettler. Had it not been for this unfortunate occurrence, Prince Chun would not have been sent to Germany to convey the apologies of the Chinese government to the German Emperor, and he would thus never have had the opportunity of a trip to Europe; and the world might once more have beheld a regent on the dragon throne who had never seen anything a hundred miles from his own capital.