Show brwon for this paper THE EMPEROR OF CHINA WILL devote my letter this week to the emperor of china he is the most secluded in monarch 0 n on the face of the globe and no race horse i is s guarded more carefully than he his afi officials have him corralled in the center of the big tartar city of peking Pekin Lr and you have to go through three sets of walls before you approach the building in which he is kept guarded carded by eunuchs first there are tae the immense walls of the great tartar city which are sixty feet thick and as tall as a four story flat these a large area filled up with the houses of tartars and government buildings which run around a space in the center of which is known as the imperial city this has a high wall of gray bricks about six miles in length and it includes the outside palaces the pleasure grounds and the temples of the sacred city the emperor is is kept in the third pen inside this and his exclusive quarters are known as the purple e forbidden city the walls of this f fast ast pen are rigidly guarded they the quarters of the emperor his famil family the ladies of the royal harem and the thousands of eunuchs who make up the servants it has buildings in the center for court ceremonies and there are small buildings arranged around on the two sides of a ridge of palaces which runs from the north to the south the emperor himself lives in the northwestern part ol of the pen and the empress dowager has a palace near by in another part of the inclosure is the hall of literary abyss or the imperial library and in this the cabinet officers hold their sessions and it contains also a department of the royal treasury no one outside of the foreign legations has ever gotten into the palaces of the emp emperor eror of china and no foreigner is permitted e emitted to see him our minister has g been een granted an audience but even the chinese of peking do not know how he looks and of the hundreds of millions who make up the em empire pire I 1 venture to say that there are not five thousand men outside of his eunuchs who have ever set eyes on him he knows absolutely nothing about the actual condition of his people and capital when he goes out into the city matting is hung up in front of all the houses and strips ot cloth are stretched across the alleys and side streets through which the imperial procession must pass burmin our minster minister warns all americans not to go out at their peril for the emperor is always accompanied by soldiers and the man who peeps around the corner or has his eye fastened fastened to a hole in the matting is liable to be blinded with a bullet or arrow the streets are fixed up for the occasion all the booths and squatters are driven away and the roads are covered with bright yellow clay yellow is the e imp imperial e r color 0 r a and nd I 1 saw armies of hi iaco h half naked d coolies 0 ai e s carrying such dirt into the city in wheelbarrows during my stay in peking for one of the emperors outings it is the same when he goes into the country and as some of his tours to worship at the tombs of his ancestors extend many miles you will see that it costs something in the way of clay hauling to give him a good track to move on it is not easy to get reliable go gossip ssp asp about the emperor of china andi and the only view I 1 had of his palaces was from the city walls and during the time that I 1 prowled round the gate with my snapshot camera and my chinese photographer still I 1 met a number of officials who were quite close to the throne and I 1 got good information from one or two eunuchs I 1 visited peking six years ago at the time that the empress dowager picked out his first wives and some of the stories I 1 will tell further on were given me in a whisper and if their authors were known they might lose their heads the truth of the matter is that the young emperor is is by no means an angel and the eunuchs told me that he hops up and down in his rage when anything goes against him he is merely the tool of the old empress dowager and he has been under this old ladys thumb since he was a baby she supervised his education she picked out his wives for him and she makes the ladies ot of his harem howl today if they dont walk chalk in her presence of course she took her own friends when she selected his wives and she has him so hemmed about with her officials and girls that if he had a will of his own he know how to use it the emperor was seventeen years old at the time of his marriage six six years ago and she gave him three wives to start with the selection was curious all the pretty tartar girls of the empire numbering many thousands were gathered together and sorted and the best of them were sent on to peking the selection was first made by the governors ot of the provinces and no girl was presented who was over eighteen nor under twelve years ot of age the choice lots loth were dressed in the finest of clothes and were carted from all parts of the empire into peking they were here submitted to the inspection of the old empress dowager being brought into her presence in lots of five she passed upon them as fast as she could and weeded out the poorest and dullest those who remained were taken out for the time and brought in in new lots and so the sorting went on until the thousands had dwindled to the hundreds the hundreds to scores and the scores at last down to fifteen these fifteen girls were put into training their paces were tested and all sorts of experiments were made as to their tempers and traits after some months the old empress picked out the three girls she liked and the eldest of these who was eighteen years old became empress the two others became what are called secondary wives wives or chief concubines and these two latter were sisters one of whom was thirteen and the other fifteen years old the marriage of the emperor was celebrated on the day that president harrison was inaugurated augu rated and you may have some idea of the occasion when I 1 tell you yop that it cost ten million dollars in addi tion to his wives he be has no ends of concubines and the laws of china pro vides that a sorting like that I 1 described must be made every three years of all the pretty tartar girls in their teens and that the most select of the lot must be shipped into palace the emperor eror is not restricted as to the number ee he takes and he picks out those he likes best he has a right to dismiss them at any time that thai he pleases but they usually remain until twenty five years of age when if they have had no children they eap exp expect act to be sent away from the palace they have no trouble however in in getting good husbands the whole chinese court is made up of intrigues and intriguers intrigue rs and the nobles are glad to have their daughters in the royal aarem these tartar garls have a dress of their own and they wear long skirts instead of the silk pantaloons of their chinese sisters they do not bind up their feet and there are no squeezed feet inside the imperial palace they are indeed the prettiest girls of the empire their faces are a delicate cream verging merging on the bloom of a large yellow peach and their black almond eyes are soulful enough to stir the blood of the coldest caucasian no man with such surroundings can devote much time to a little matter like that of a war with japan and doin doing what his highest officials and the OIS old dowager direct amusing himself in the meantime with his wives and his eunuchs he has in fact much the same place that the mikado had in japan under the sho guns he is a sort ot of a holy figure head and his officials know the more sacred they make him the more power will be given to them and the more license tor for their squeezing and stealing r everything connected with the emperor is is regulated by law he has imperial physicians who watch over his health ane law provides just what he shall eat and I 1 am told that he squats on the floor at his meals and eats out of golden bowls with ivory chopsticks chop sticks according to the old chinese books there must be placed daily before him thirty pounds oi of meat in a basin and seven pounds boiled meat into soup he has a daily allowance of about a pound of hogs fat and butter and he has the right to order two sheep two fowls and two ducks while his drink for the day is restricted to the milk of eighty cows and the steeping of seventy five parcels of tea it is probable that his real diet is different and I 1 doubt not he is now taking bits of roast leopard and tiger bone soup to keep up his courage for the chinese think that these things really make a man brave it if he desires anything that is not on the menu the board having charge of the imperial table has to be consulted so I 1 am told before he is supplied the emperor is by no means a physical g giant bant he is lean and unhealthy and h his is features are long and unlike those of the typical chinaman his eyes are almost straight and he bears the marks of his pure tartar blood his life is by no means conducive to health he does all his business at night and he sleeps in the daytime he begins his work about midnight just after his breakfast and he receives his cabinet ministers under th rays of the electra 11 ight g lit he ha numerous audiences abw and the big officials have to cool their heels in the antechamber ante chamber of the palace of peking quite as often as they do in the white house house at washington when they are ushered into his presence they get down on their knees and bump their heads again ana anc again on the floor and they have to remain on their knees while before him not long ago he took a notion to learn english and two students of the college at peking were appointed as his teachers he recited his lessons at i 1 in the morning and for some time these boys who acted as teachers had to remain on their knees while his majesty butchered the kings english before them he kept up his studies for some time but I 1 was told in peking that he had given up the attempt the emperor of china is to a certain extent the editor of the famous peking gazette this is the oldest newspaper of the world and it has been published almost daily for eight hundred years vears it was read by the chinese centuries before america was discovered and it was six six hundred years old when the first daily newspaper of our civilization began its publication in 1615 it is nothing like our newspapers however the copies which are sent all over china are more like the cheapest of patent medicine almanacs than anything else they are bound in yellow covers and are printed from blocks on the thinnest est of rice paper A page of the peking gazette is about three inches wide and seven inches long and there are sixteen pages and upward in each issue none of the issues contain one hundredth the amount of the material in a sunday news the newspaper begins at the back instead of at the front the lines run up and down instead of across the top and you read from right to left across the page instead of prom from left to right as with us it aas no advertisements no editorials and no social gossip the government allows no comments on its actions and it is a crime to add to or subtract from its matter in its republication the newspaper is made up of official acts and reports and such of the reports as the emperor thinks ought to be published are looked over by him and he marks with a red pencil his comments upon them these are pasted upon dill boards outside of the palace and the scribes copy them into books which are sent out each day these first copies are the original issues of the peking gazette they are beautifully engrossed and they command a price of about a hundred dollars a year private printing firms buy them and the engravers make blocks from which the cheaper copies are printed some editions go for thirty cents a month and numbers of chinese families club together and buy these cheaper editions so that a man may pay perhaps one twentieth of a cent lor jor reading a copy of the peking gazette I 1 have a bound volume of this paper which has been translated into english and I 1 get translations every week in the english newspapers which I 1 receive from china practically nothing is as yet given about the chinese japanese war except that in the issue of august 38 28 it is stated that the empress dowager has sent boxes of cooling pills to the soldiers in corea and the couriers probably bring the news in on horseback and retail it to tb the people there is no doubt that thereas iff more lying dime in the dis nation of Official reports than tan can possibly be committed by american reporters lind and 1 learn from peking that the people are kept in entire ignorance of what is going on in the war with japan it is doubtful whether the emperor himself understands his real situation he has I 1 venture never reviewed hi his own army and he knows nothing about military arX tactics it is a common amusement with him to go out and shoot with a bow and arrow and his only experience peri ence as to traveling by railroad has been in in a small train of cars which a french syndicate who wanted to get railroad concessions concessions presented to him the train cost them I 1 am told something like one hundred thousand dollars the emperor refused to accept it as a gift and sent them back the sum of ten thousand dollars in order to relieve himself from any obligation it is now six six years since the present was made and they have gotten no concessions I 1 saw these cars in tien tsin some years apo ago when they were on their way to the emperor they were carried into peking by water and his majesty had a track laid in the palace grounds and they were run for a short time with steam this however was too fast for his majesty and I 1 understand that he now harnesses up his eunuchs to the engine and has them whipped right royally by the brakeman as he rides through the grounds the emperor knows nothing of modern civilization and modern warfare he does not even know hu his own coun country and did he possess a great character it would have been ruined long since by his ings this is the man who is supposed to be at the head of the great chinese empire and who ought to be directing the war with japan he is I 1 am told largely governed by his eunuchs they have been his closet associates throughout his life and different estimates state that he has all the way from four to ten thousand of these eunuchs in the palace our own mini minister col denby says that he has actual information that there are at least four thousand and when you remember that this immense colony is scattered over an area not much larger than that of a farm you will see that eunuchs are thicker than blackberries in august they are graded in different departments and each has his own duties those of ordinary rank receive from two to twelve dollars a month but they make fortunes out of squeezing and stealing and there is one eunuch in the palace who is said to be worth millions his name is pi esiau li and he is the confidential servant ot of the old empress dowager he is a great office broker and I 1 heard of instances of his getting a hundred thousand dollars and upward for single offices and I 1 have no doubt that he divides h his is profits with the old empress all of th the e officials of peking are afraid of him and though he began life as the son of a shoemaker he has more power than many of the princes his father farthier yas was a cobbler in the city ef cf tung chow about fifteen miles from peking but since his son has become so powe powerful the old man has been elevated t to a fat office and be has a feather m his hat I 1 saw daw a number ot of instances myself in peking which gave me an insight into the he stealing of these eunuchs the finest of the silks and embroideries of china are made for the emperor he has vast silk looms loom sat at and he has great porcelain |