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on him. Mesny had taken every opportunity to praise Tso and, in good Chinese fashion, looked upon him as his 'protector' or 'patron'.
In a comparatively brief single-page highlights-only curriculum vitae printed in the Miscellany in 1905, Mesny would appear to have been careful in his choice of words. He used the phrase 'Volunteered for service' not only when he went to Kueichou in 1868, about which he later wrote at length, but also in connexion with 'Manchuria' and 'Peking', the former during the Sino-Japanese War and the latter at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, neither of which has been mentioned elsewhere in the Miscellany. This suggests that he was not taken up on his offers of service, especially as his name does not appear in any of the standard writings on the Boxer era in north China and he does not describe or offer any anecdotes on the subject in his Miscellany.
His Miscellanies contain a large number of items culled from other works such as Mayer's Chinese Reader's Manual written in Peking in 1874 where Mayers was a Chinese Secretary to HM Legation, and published in Shanghai the same year by the American Presbyterian Mission Press. At one point Mesny claimed that W F Mayers was a friend of his; but reading between the lines one is tempted to see Mesny meeting Mayers over dinner at the Legation in Peking where polite conversation would lead to a discussion on the failure of the Chinese to help build a railway, with Mesny offering advice and suggestions and Mayers, again politely, concurring. This would appear to have been seen by Mesny as Mayers accepting Mesny's ideas and entrusting him with various tasks. Mayers in all probability forgot all about the conversation, but not so Mesny who repeated himself several times in his Miscellanies, explaining how he had offered advice and had been waiting for a follow up from Mayers which never arrived. It is a matter for speculation how often this type of conversation took place, with other parties forgetting, either with or without intent, their talks with Mesny.
Mesny periodically advanced oracular statements which in later years would be referred to as 'China-watching'. In 1899 he made several predictions about the 'inadequacies' of the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty and forecast that the end was 'very' nigh with a new reformed China ahead. He also predicted that the Russians for all their implied power would be unable to retain Manchuria against the Japanese who also, Mesny thought, might join up with China making a powerful empire under the Mikado as ruler of the Greater China and Japan. These predictions