Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/59

 Emperor" herself. The end of this woman was in violent antagonism to poetical justice. She was eventually deposed; but she lived her life out in a splendid palace, and passed peacefully away at the last. Her memory and the memory of the Empress Lü are both infamous, and the Chinese point to the reigns of these two women as justifications of the national policy with respect to the exclusion of women. But now another precedent appears on the page of history. The late Eastern Empress, Tz'ŭ An Tuan Yü Chien Ching Chao Ho Chuang Ch'ing Huang T'ai Hou, who died some years ago, is said to have been a virtuous and amiable woman, but devoid of commanding genius. The Chinese speak differently of the Western Empress, the lady who then became sole Regent. She, according to all accounts, is a person of great originality and force of will. Some years ago she was dangerously sick, and for months her condition caused the gravest anxiety at Court. The only food it was possible for her to take was milk, and no fewer than sixty wet-nurses were engaged to keep Her Majesty alive. Physicians were sent for from all parts of the empire, some of whom, in despair of their own nostrums, went secretly and begged medicine from Dr. Dudgeon of Peking, a well-known practitioner who reckons some of the highest mandarins in the metropolis among his patients. The applicants, however, were unsuccessful; the doctor told them plainly that if the Court chose to swallow its pride and call him in he would undertake the case of the illustrious patient with pleasure, but that he certainly objected to confiding his drugs to other people, and letting them reap all the credit in the event of Her Majesty getting well. Suddenly it was announced that the