The Empress Dowager’s charities are extensive; she feeds the poor and succors the unfortunate. When her sympathies are aroused, she gives freely and generously. Her edicts are constantly ordering sacks of rice and food to be distributed among the poor and sent to districts where famine reigns. There is a great refuge in Peking, which she supports, where ten thousand poor are succored and fed during the year. During the winter, edicts are constantly appearing similar to this--commanding “The distribution from the Imperial granaries of fifteen hundred piculs (133-1/3 pounds to the picul) of rice for refuges and gruel stations for the poor in North Tung Chow.” Edict of November 6, 1904. She also sympathizes with misfortune, tries to right the wrongs she knows of, and correct the abuses that come to her ears. From the “North China Herald” of November 19, 1904, I copy the following, and this paper cannot be accused of viewing any of Her Majesty’s acts with a partial spirit (much to the contrary): “During the Boxer troubles a bad character, by the name of Wang, owed money to a certain Chinese Mohammedan. Wang had been frequently dunned, and was finally condemned by the courts to pay the debt; he was, besides, ordered to be beaten, as he had been insolent to the Mandarin trying the case. This incensed Wang, and he swore vengeance. When the Boxer troubles were in full swing in Peking, he became the leader of a band of insurgents and led his band to the house of the Mohammedan whom he had been forced by the courts to pay. Wang and his band massacred not only his old enemy, but eleven members of his family; leaving only a young daughter-in-law who had hidden in a loft and saw the whole tragedy; she also saw them march off, carrying, on spears, the heads of the old man and four of his sons. The poor daughter-in-law escaped from Peking soon after, and was not able to return there until a few months since, in 1904. She discovered the dwelling of the murderer of her husband’s family, and had a petition drawn up on the subject. One day when Her Majesty was proceeding from one Palace to another, the young widow threw herself before the Empress Dowager’s cortège. Her Majesty saw the prostrate girl (only nineteen years of age), and commanded her guards to ask what she wanted. The girl, dressed in deep mourning, held above her head her petition, calling for justice against her husband’s murderers. Her Majesty read the petition, and her brow became black as night. She called to a eunuch in her train and commanded him to take the young petitioner and her petition to the ‘Board of Punishments,’ and deliver the Imperial Commands that no time be lost in arresting the murderers; that they should be tried, and the result reported to Her Majesty. This was done, and on the first of November, 1904, the chief murderer Wang, his two sons and a nephew were decapitated to expiate their cruel crimes.”