The Viceroyal ante-chamber is always fled with people waiting for an audience. Two officers of the Viceroy's suite are also in attendance, one a young naval officer, the other a military man. At the end of this room is a large desk piled with documents; on the walls are maps and plans, old' notifications with new notifications placed over them and lists which look like time-tables; while bundles of newspapers are scattered ut. One bundle contained the emits,"" another a miscellaneous collec-of Russian papers, a third the Hongkong Government Gazette."
At the time of my visit this room was filled with a number of the biggest men Lever saw im my life. Most of them were Generals or high military. officers, one was a naval officer, two were civi-lions, two were clergymen. The clergymen wore long flowing robes like lawyers and around their neck were suspended crucifixes of gold. I think one of them was a Lutheran clergyman who had arrived in town the previous day. from Viadivostock to attend to the religious needs of the few hundred Letts among the Russian solders and civilians in Port Arthur. I may here remark that there are five Russian churches here, mostly for the usc of the military; one Jewish synagogue, and no Roman Catholic or Protestant church, although in Port Arthur an' Dalny there are about 4,000 Roman Catholics, mostly, I suppose, Poles.
I said that the ante-chamber contained a collection of the biggest men I ever saw in my life. Some of them were giants and their enormous beards, swords, and uniforms made them look striking. Most of them wore decorations, some a very large number of decorations. Two of them were asked to go upstairs at once to see the Viceroy, the rest of us waited about half-an-hone and then went up in a bods. We drew up in line along one side of a sumptuously-furnished drawing-mom. evidently connected with the Viceroy's private apartments.
The Vicero I must say that I awaited with great interest the coming of the Czar's representative in the Far East. The extraordinary extent of his power and the reports L had heard of his ability, and endurance excited my curiosity an unusual extent. I felt that I was about to sce a historical personage, a a man destined to make history, bloodstained or the reverse. I had been told that during the Boxer troubles the Admiral had worked for some time twenty hours a day, and that at present the amount of business—naval, military, civil, ete—that he gets through every day would make the average man break down in a week and would make the average British workman go on "strike" in half that time. And his business does not consist merely in signing papers. He thinks for him set An American man of afficrs once asked him, for instance, why he established his headquarters in Port Arthur and not in Dalny. "I want he stores for my fleet in a large said he, "I don't want to pay them than is necessary. Now I inly have to pay" more for them in Dalny than in Port Arthur."
This practical answer might have been made by the first Napoleon. It shows
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.