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Show THE ""BOXERS" OF THIRTY YEARS AGO. With the startling tidings of the "Boxer" movement in China there come many reminders of the evil days of thirty years ago, when Christian blood flowed in streams within the walls of Tien Tsin. ince the great missionary mis-sionary massacre of 1870 there has been for Western Christians residing in the realms of the Tien-tze or "Son of Heaven" Hea-ven" an odor of blood in the name of Tien Tsin. By the Anglo-Franco-Chinese treaty of I860 that port was thrown open for the first time to foreign trade. In the following year a British consulate was ! established on the spot. Hostility to the white-face from the west ran high and fierce, for the mob of Tien Tsin had little intercourse with Europeans,' and, moreover, retained fresh and vivid recollections bitter as calomel and gall of the sack of Pekin, the "Purple Forbidden For-bidden City," by the Anglo-French forces in 1860. It 'was against this wall of racial hate that a band of noble French Sisters bravely flung themselves them-selves at Tien Tsin. With the aid of Father Chevrier and the French consul, con-sul, they speedily opened a hosptail for sufferers of every nationality and creed. Others of the devoted little band engaged in clothing, feeding and educating edu-cating the little girls that had been purchased by the aid of the Holy infancy in-fancy Fund. "The Celestials," says M. Plauchut, in his "Chnia and the Chinese," Chi-nese," "are in the habit of buying girls, but for a very different purpose to that of the devoted priests and Sisters, Sis-ters, but they could not be brought to believe that the missionaries received the children merely to feed, educate and make Christians of them." All sorts of wild,' tales were set afloat about the Sisters. The mob was worked work-ed up to a fine pitch of fury, and at a preconcerted signal the armed bravos rushed upon their victims. The French consul his wife and his interpreter were the first to fall beneath be-neath the blows of the assassins. "Meantime," says Plauchut, "as a shep-' shep-' herd calls his flock together when the wolves are threatening, the Abbe Chevrier Chev-rier had collected around him the orphan or-phan children to "the number -of 100 then under the care of the missionaries; mission-aries; but they were all massacred, the good priest dying amongst them." From 9 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon the work of slaughtering French apd other foreigners went on without intermission. in-termission. The sun was low when the busy mob remembered that the French Sisters were still living. They proceeded pro-ceeded to the convent, battered down the door and, says the French author already quoted, "fo'und the superior of the Sisterhood calmly waiting to receive' re-ceive' them. Alas!" he continues, "her fortitude availed her nothing; she was brutally seized, dragged to a post not far off and bound to it. Then ensued a scene too horrible for description, j The fiends in human shape danced round their helpless victim and inflicted on her all the tortures in which the Chinese are so terribly skilled, finally cutting her body into small pieces. The terrified nuns kneeling on the steps of their little chapel in agonized prayer were one and all first outraged and then murdered, their home and church were set fire to and their mangled bodies flung into the flames." A few useless h'eads dropped in China over this foul massacre. But the real offenders were never brought to justice. jus-tice. France was too engrossed at the time with the fierce struggle against Germany to weep much or for long over the torture and massacre of a few French missionaries in far off Tien Tsin. The crimnal in chief, Chunk-Ho, governor of Tien Tsin, was actually sent to Paris by the astute Orientals to "explain matters." He went, saw, conquered was received with splendid honors by M. Thiers. His explanations were deemed satisfactory. He returned in peace to his own country, and had not long touched its shores when another an-other Outbreak against the "foreign devils" occurred and the souls of several sev-eral French missionaries were sent to heaven after a prolonged agony of fiendish torture. Six years after the great massacre of 1870 another band of Sisters went to Tien Tsin from . the mother house in the Rue du Bac, Paris. Many others have joined them since. And the splendid work which they are doing with hospitals and schools among the heathen may at any moment be again interrupted as it was on that red day thirty years ago. |