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Lou Henry Hoover chides college friend Evelyn Wight Allen for her failure to come to China in time for the Boxer Rebellion in June, 1900. The Hoovers -- along with 800 European and American citizens -- had suffered through a 45 day siege by 30,000 Boxer fanatics who had surrounded Tientsin. After an international relief force drove off the Boxers, Mrs. Hoover found time to write an extraordinary letter in which she proudly compared their ordeal with the experiences of Kimberly and Mafeking, two English settlements that had been surrounded for several months during the recent Boer War in South Africa. A remarkable set of vignettes from one of America's strangest wars.