Page:American Boy's Life of William McKinley.djvu/316

 270 like that in my whole life. The Boxers had the whole battlefield filled with banners, and they kept up the greatest lot of dum-dumming on their drums you ever heard. They were fantastically dressed, some in long robes that were continually in the way when they wanted to move around, and some of the officers actually carried their fans and had servants to carry their big parasols. Some of the poor fellows wore garments with strange symbols on them, thinking that they would be saved thereby from getting shot. And the strangest part of it all was that many of them, when they were shot, would simply crouch up in a little heap to die, without letting anybody touch them to turn them over to a surgeon or give them aid."