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1. Sarah Pike Conger as she appeared during her husband’s tenure as Iowa congressman in the 1880s. Author’s collection. 2. An 1885 campaign button for Edwin Hurd Conger, Iowa congressman and future minister to China. Author’s collection. 3. Lombard College’s “Old Main.” It is the only extant building from the Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858, and would have looked much like this when Edwin Conger and Sarah Pike were students at Lombard. Rex Cherrington Collection. 4. L a u r a C o n g e r B u c h a n , Sarah’s daughter, a young woman whose fragility belied a powerful intelligence and a will of steel that faltered only briefly during the fifty-five-day siege of the British legation. Author’s collection. [44.220.41.140] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:37 GMT) 5. View from the Tartar wall looking north, showing buildings belonging to the American legation on the left, the arched porches of the residence of the British minister further along, the Jade Canal running to the east of both, and the rooftops of the Forbidden City palace complex in the distance. Where the Chinese are standing on the wall (below) was very near the most embattled portion of the fortifications during the Boxer siege in July–August 1900. The temple that served as the Congers’ home for their last years in Beijing lay just to the left of the figure in dark clothing. Author’s collection. 6. The drawing room of the American legation in Beijing, post-1900. Formerly known as the Sanguanmiao, where the last Ming emperor prayed before committing suicide in 1644, the building was used as a home by the Congers while the new American legation was constructed. Temporary as it was, it was the closest Sarah ever came to living in a real Chinese house, and as such was the home closest to her heart. Author’s collection. 7. American doctor, and friend of Edwin and Sarah Conger, N. S. Hopkins on the Great Wall of China with two lady companions, pre-1900, showing the ruinous condition of parts of the fortification. This photograph was fixed atop paperweight-sized slices of Great Wall brick and sold in silk-bound boxes for the benefit of medical services in China. Author’s collection. 8. From left, Sarah Conger, Laura Conger Buchan, and Edwin Conger at the Three Hills Nunnery in the Western Hills, the ancient temple that was the American legation’s summer retreat (pre-1900). Russell Collection. 9. A view of the Beijing Observatory before 1900. The thirteenth-century structure, with its foreign-designed instruments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was one of Sarah’s favorite places and a symbol to her of what the two great peoples of West and East could achieve when they worked together. Author’s collection. [44.220.41.140] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:37 GMT) 10. A Manchu funeral in Beijing, circa 1925. Leave out the telegraph wires and this could be a procession from a century earlier—a mix of East and West, modern and ancient, that was part of Sarah Conger’s daily experience in Beijing. Author’s collection. 11. Members of the diplomatic corps sitting on the sacred animal sculptures at the Tomb of the Princesses outside Beijing, circa 1900. The Giles Pickford Collection. ©Australian National University. 12. The diplomatic wives who attended the first audience with the empress dowager in December 1898. Sarah Conger is fourth from right, with Lady MacDonald in stripes standing to the fore. Author’s collection. 13. The northeast corner of the Forbidden City’s moated wall. Behind this mysterious structure lay the empress dowager’s most private pavilions and courtyards, the so-called Retirement Palaces. Photograph: Les Hayter. 14. The Congers’ Number One Boy, Wang (far right) and his family. “The very best of the best,” Sarah wrote of him. Author’s collection. 15. Sketch from a photograph showing, from left, Edwin Conger, painter Cecile Payen, and servant having tiffin atop the Great Wall, May 1900. This was their last calm before the storm of the Boxer Uprising. Author’s collection. [44.220.41.140] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:37 GMT) 16. Cecile Payen’s watercolor of Dr. Poole’s bungalow at the British legation, painted in late July 1900. Payen gave the painting to Sarah Conger for her birthday, and it survived the siege. Sally Jewell Coxe Collection. Photograph: Sally Jewell Coxe. 17...