"I believe up until yesterday we were quite safe. I have been through a great deal in my time. I was in Senchow in 1903, my first year in China. I was only eighteen then. You couldn't expect me to seek shelter at the first alarm. But yesterday things grew suddenly worse. Shells fell from somewhere very near, my amah said from a car on a siding by the North Station. One of them wrecked the servants' quarters across the court, but no one was hurt, fortunately. I could tell that areas near us were on fire. There has been a tremendous amount of smoke. And there was plenty of street fighting all afternoon. But by that time we had abandoned the front of the house because about noon an unfriendly crowd gathered outside and broke the windows with stones. Once some one set fire to our buildings in the back here, but we managed to put it out, with God's help. To my surprise a guard was appointed by some one to protect the property. I don't know by whom. They spend most of their time in the eating-house across the street and they did not help us a bit when the crowd gathered. But when I try to go out they always stop me. All yesterday afternoon I sent my amah out with the children, one by one, to the houses of various Christian Chinese, who I knew would take care of them. But the little Russians I had no place for, and besides, the amah never came back after the last trip. So there are only the five Russians, Miss Minton and I here. Miss Soames, you know, is in the Shanghai General, she was taken ill over a week ago." "Why do you suppose a crowd gathered, just general animosity or something special?" "Rather special, I am afraid. A child was run over by a truck in front of the house about a week ago. We took him in here and gave him first aid but he died shortly after, and the parents came and made a terrible to-do, blaming us for his death. He was an only son and the father is a foreman in one of the Naigai cotton mills, a prominent labor leader, rather important in this district. Of course we've always had a great deal of antagonism from the people here, but I think the incident would account for the crowd. I believe if it had not been for our little guard and the fact that there were so many snipers about in the streets and on the house-tops they might have--well, they might have done nearly anything to us."