Photo by H. S. Elliott 
PRESSING COTTON CLOTH IN SZECHUAN 
This is the method of pressing the cloth 
after it has been dyed. The man puts his 
weight from one side to the other and the 
heavy stone-roller goes over the cloth. 
With clanking chains I leave my prison pen 
Alone, to die beside the Shun Chih men, 
Where, in the market-place, their life’s blood 
runs, 
Five loyal and six learned Hukuang sons. 
I too shall lie there with you. I have won 
But little and my day is done. 
Japan and Russia striving for the East, 
China her second capital hath lost. 
Partition comes apace, O bitter thought! 
Rulers, look ye on the Allies’ maps for nought? 
My countrymen and foreign journalists! 
O publish forth in the five continents 
My buried wrongs! 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
The secret treaty I have dared to tell— 
For this *twas Ch’ing and Chung Lang used me 
ill. 
The little reputation I have won, 
How worthless! this year I am but thirty-one! 
Henceforth come weal, come woe, I shall not 
heed, 
Amidst the choirs of Heaven shall my spirit 
feed.* 
ATTEMPTS TO ASSASSINATE THE EMPRESS 
DOW AGER 
At the same time the Empress Dowager 
began devising a constitutional govern- 
ment for the Empire that she afterwards 
inaugurated, and that was a wise and 
sufficient scheme if carried out, and in 
fact was being systematically put into 
operation when revolution broke out. 
She is the first cause of the revolution to 
the reformers, and calls for more than a 
passing word. 
There are two schools of reformers, 
and they are divided by the period of 
the Boxer War of 1900.- The hatred 
which the Empress Dowager excited in 
the world by her massacres of foreigners 
at that time and among the reformers of 
China can be compared only with her 
magnitude as a sovereign. She was an 
autocratic luminary, like a planet, of 
enormous political dimensions. Foreign- 
ers and natives alike clamored for her 
life. A foreign correspondent of posi- 
tion and fame in the world was in the 
habit of proffering a reward of $1,000 
to any one who would assassinate her. 
For the last 20 years of her life for- 
eigners regarded her as China’s greatest 
enemy, and professed to believe that her 
death would be China’s greatest blessing. 
These ideas were mixed with other West- 
ern influences in China and had their 
effect on the Chinese. 
A reformer, whom I knew well, came 
to me at a time and place which it would 
be indiscreet to identify, and told me he 
himself desired to kill the Empress Dow- 
ager, and that he had made preparations 
to do so. He was a young man of con- 
siderable attainments and experience and 
equipped for such an enterprise. It was 
a beautiful, calm day on which he called 
to make with me a final disposition of 
his affairs. 
* By courtesy of the Metropolitan Magazine. 
