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. This looked very much as though it had been tabled.
Not long thereafter, however, she sent word to Mrs. Conger,
asking that Miss Carl be invited to come to Peking and paint her
portrait.
"We all know how this portrait had to be begun on an auspicious
day; how a railroad had to be built to the Foreign Office rather
than have the portrait carried out on men's shoulders, as though
she were dead; how she celebrated her seventieth birthday when
she was sixty-nine, to defeat the gods and prevent their bringing
such a calamity during the celebration as had occurred when she
was sixty, when the Japanese war disturbed her festivities. On
her clothes she wore the ideographs for 'Long Life and
'Happiness,' and most of the presents she gave were emblematic of
some good fortune. Her palace was decorated with great plates of
apples, which by a play on words mean 'Peace,' and with plates of
peaches, which mean 'Longevity.' On her person she wore charms,
one of which she took from her neck and placed on the neck of
Mrs. Conger when she was about to leave China, saying that she
hoped it might protect her during her journey across the ocean,
as it had protected herself during her wanderings in 1900, and
she would not allow any one to appear in her presence who had any
semblance of mourning about her clothing.
"It is a well-known fact that no Manchu woman ever binds her
feet, and the Empress Dowager was as much opposed to foot-binding
as any other living woman
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