The interior of the Emperor’s abode consisted of low, rather dingy rooms opening off each other. The appointments were of anything but regal magnificence. The furniture was of carved blackwood, with an admixture of tawdry European chairs and sofas. On the walls hung a weird medley of Chinese paintings and cheap foreign oleographs, all in gorgeous gilt frames. The latter were such as would be found in a fifth‐rate lodging‐house—horse races, children playing at see‐saw, conventional landscapes, and farmyard scenes. Jade ornaments and artificial flowers in vases abounded; but all around, wherever one could be hung or placed, were European clocks, from the gilt French timepiece under a glass shade to the cheapest wooden eight‐day clock. There must have been at least two or three hundred, probably more, scattered about the pavilion. The Chinese have a weird and inexplicable passion for them, and a man’s social respectability would seem to be gauged more by the number of timepieces he possesses than by any other outward and visible signs of wealth. What a costly collection of rare masterpieces of art is to the American millionaire, the heterogeneous gathering of foreign clocks apparently is to the Celestial plutocrat. The Imperial bed was a fine piece of carved blackwood; but the most magnificent article of furniture in the pavilion was a large screen of the famous Canton featherwork, made of the green and blue plumage of the kingfisher. The design, which was framed and covered with glass, represented a pilgrimage to a sacred mountain. On its summit stood a temple, towards which crowds of worshippers climbed wearily. As a work of art it was excellent. It was the only thing in the Imperial apartments which I coveted. The rest of the furniture and fittings were tawdry and apparently valueless. The pavilion of the Empress‐Consort was rather more luxuriously upholstered than that of her husband and contained some splendid embroideries. In her boudoir, besides the inevitable collection of clocks, oleographs, and artificial flowers, were a piano and a small organ, both very much out of tune, presented, we were told, by European ladies resident in China.