poor Derling has none." Before my mother could answer her she had turned to me while I was standing at the back of her chair: "I will have a nice pair made for you. You are mine now." My mother told her that I did not like to wear heavy earrings. Her Majesty laughed and said: "Never mind, she is mine now, and I will give her everything she needs. You have nothing to do with her." The earrings she gave me were very heavy. Her Majesty said that if I would wear them every day I would get used to them, and so it proved that after some time I thought nothing of it. Now about this Feast. It is also called the Dragon Boat Feast. The fifth of the fifth moon at noon was the most poisonous hour for the poisonous insects, and reptiles such as frogs, lizards, snakes, hide themselves in the mud, for that hour they are paralyzed. Some medical men search for them at that hour and place them in jars, and when they are dried, sometime use them as medicine. Her Majesty told me this, so that day I went all over everywhere and dug into the ground, but found nothing. The usual custom was that at noon Her Majesty took a small cup filled with spirits of wine, and added a kind of yellow powder (something like sulphur). She took a small brush and dipped it into the cup and made a few spots of this yellow paint under our nostrils and ears. This was to prevent any insects from crawling on us during the coming summer. The reason why it was also called the Dragon Boat Festival was because at the time of the Chou Dynasty the country was divided into several parts. Each place had a ruler. The Emperor Chou had a Prime Minister named Chi Yuan, who advised him to make alliance with the other six countries, but the Emperor refused, and Chi Yuan thought that the country would be taken by others in the near future. He could not influence the Emperor, so he made up his mind to commit suicide and jumped into the river, taking a large piece of stone with him. This happened on the fifth day of the fifth moon, so the year afterwards, the Emperor got into a Dragon boat to worship his soul, and throw rice cakes, called Tzu Tsi, into the river. On that day the people have celebrated this feast ever since. At the Palace the theatre played first this history, which was very interesting, and also played the insects trying to hide themselves before the most poisonous hour arrived. On that day we all wore tiger shoes, the front part of which was made of a tiger's head, with little tigers made of yellow silk to wear on the headdress. These tigers were only for the children to wear, and signified that they would be as strong as a tiger, but Her Majesty wanted us to wear them also. The wives of the Manchu officials came to the Court, and when they saw us they laughed at us. We told them it was by Her Majesty's orders.