Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1899-01-29
CATHARINE II. OF CHINA.
Grand Old Woman Who Has So Lona Ruled the Celestial
 Empire.

Catharine II. of China is not merely great empress; historians of the future may be trusted to regard her as a great woman. A dispatch recently cabled from Picking to the Herald describes her as seated on dais receiving the ladies of the diplomatic corps. The emperor is reported to have been also present, but unimportantly at her left, It was nice of her, though, to let him be there at all He is but the nephew of his aunt. It is the lady who reigns and who has reigned for 37 years. Said Con- fucius: Man is to woman what the sun is to the moon; he orders. she obeys, and harmony is the result" Confucius was wise in his generation, but not in nineteenth century Cathay. There the moon orders, and not the sun merely but the nephew also obeys. It is as well, perhaps. There are prede- cessors of his who baked and who be- cause of it rejoined their ancestors in- stanter. Catharine IL of China is lady who likes her own way. That, howev- CT, is natural Catharine l. of Russia began life as a servant Catharine H. of China began as slave. It is said that contrary to local custom, her face is not painted. But everything about her is contrary to local custom. Never till she emerged from her seullery has a woman dreamed of usurping the dragon seat. Fancy an odalesque step ping from the seraglio and busting the sultan from his throne Such per- formance is unimaginable, and yet this lady has done better, one might even say worse.
 The empress doWager is by birth a Tartar The fact is worth noting Tar tars do not mutilate their daughters feet. The girl had free use of hers. At the age of II she was sold to a manda- rin In and about his household her feet took her where her superiors could not go. A Chinese girl who marries passes from one prison to another. Of the outer world she knows nothing. Of that outer world her slaves know all. It was this way with little Tsi Au. What she did not know she guessed, and what she could not guess she learned She learned to dance. A bee could not equal her. She learned to read On the tip of her tongue were a hundred stories each more diverting than the other On the tom-tom she 2earned to strum, The three notes that sse dear to the orient she repeated sur )lrfsinglY. She learned more difficult things, too; how to arrange a basket of fruit. how to touch flowers, how to smile, and how to hold her tongue Astonished at the prodigy, the manda- rim sent her as a curiosity to his soYer- eign at Pelling. One day the Son of Heaven noticed her The slave became faYorite. and, becoming a mother. be- came also a secondary wife. There. one might suppose, that had she ambitions they would have rested. It was there they began. Though that was 37 years ago they have been increasing ever since As recently related here. there sueeessiyely departed this life the Son of Heaytn, the Son of Heavens son, others who were in the way There after she was supreme.
 Lately, when the ladies of the diplo. matte corps paraded before her she patted the wife of the British ambas- sador on the cheek. The Herald states that in doing so she wore a charming smile One may readily believe it Her hand is as strong as her rise is pro. digious In modern times both are un- paralleled. There is indeed another instance of a slave attaining imperia! power, but it occurred in Hayti, and what occurs in Hayti does not count Even otherwise this lady is unique. Re garded merely as a Chinese firecracker. she is destined to burn into history with flame intolerably vicious per haPs, and yet entirely her own. = Col Hers Weekly,