When the Empress Dowager sleeps, a maid watches in her room, two eunuchs stand on guard in the ante-chamber to the room, four watch at the door of the ante-chamber, and her body-guard of eunuchs fill the building where her private apartments are situated. The maid and eunuchs who watch in the night are changed every second day. Only the High Eunuchs are intrusted with the duty of guarding her bed-chamber and Throne-room. At the Summer Palace, Her Majesty’s bedroom is not more than fifteen feet square; the bed, like all in North China, is built into an alcove in the room. Shelves run around the three inclosed sides of the alcove, and on these are placed Her Majesty’s favorite ornaments--small jade curios, books, and, of course, clocks. In this bedroom I counted fifteen timepieces on the bed shelves, and all running. Their ticking and striking, not at all simultaneous, was enough to run a nervous European woman wild; but Her Majesty takes so much outdoor exercise, she seemed to have no nerves. There were no flowers in her bedroom, but the ante-chamber, leading into it, was always full of flowers, pyramids of apples, and “Buddha’s hands.”[5] The bed-alcove is separated from the room by satin curtains, suspended from a handsomely embroidered valance, with two long embroidered bands to loop them back. [5] “Buddha’s hand,” a very fragrant fruit of the family of lemons, which is shaped like a hand, with long, curving fingers. Pyramids of this fruit are used for their perfume. Her Majesty is a light and irregular sleeper. When she wakes and finds it impossible to go to sleep again, she rises, is dressed, and often goes for a walk in the grounds, at what we would call the most unseasonable of hours. She says Nature is beautiful at every hour of the twenty-four, with a different charm for each moment. As she loves it in all its phases, she likes to see it at every hour of the twenty-four, at least once a year! When she wakes and goes for a walk at night, the eunuchs who are on duty in her Palace accompany her with lanterns, but she never takes these night walks, except by moonlight, and when the night is beautiful.