October 18, 1917 Being short of cash, I called on Mr. Robert Rankin, Manager of Andersen, Meyer & Co. to whom Clark had given me a letter. (B. Preston Clark, 55 Kilby Street, Boston - E.H. Hartmann) He was very hospitable and endorsed my check without hesitation and asked me to lunch. His house is a new one, surrounded by a large compound. He is a Cornell man and a good friend of Louis Fuertes.3 His wife was a good sort. Rankin was a passenger on the Lusitania when she was sunk. He was on the deck and saw the torpedo strike and then he jumped overboard without a life preserver and was picked up by a life boat. He said the story of passengers being sucked into the smoke stack and then blown out by the explosion was untrue. One woman claimed this feat but she was covered with soot as proof and all of them were equally soot covered owing to the sea being thus covered generally. He said this particular woman became insane and jumped overboard after being put into a lifeboat. One of the sights of Peking is to be obtained from the Great Wall marking the Tartar City. At 3pm, I went with Mrs. Bumstead to the observatory which is situated on the East Wall, a spot where a stairway of stone steps leads to the top. The instruments of the observatory were of bronze mounted on stone bases in the open. There was a sphere with stars and milky way indicated; a giant sextant marked in degrees was another instrument. Several bands or circles of bronze set at various angles but on a common axis. There is a cleared space about the wall on its inner side for military purposes. 12