A FEW WORDS ABOUT HAMEL. A spoiled woman, an extremely cross Englishman, who was her husband, and a smiling mandarin, who was their host, sat on the prow of a Chinese junk. They were rather a silent trio. The mandarin knew, or pretended he knew, no English. The Englishman pretended to know considerable Chinese, but, as a matter of fact, knew almost none. The two men were about equally fluent in rather bad French, and were wont to use it as the medium for a good deal of conversation, when they we

SOME CURIOUS KOREAN CUSTOMS. It is difficult to decide how to attack the study of a people of whom one knows practically nothing, and to whom one cannot have personal access. There are two classes of travellers—of people who travel for self-gratification, and not on business or of necessity. The traveller belonging to the first class diligently studies a whole library of guide books and other volumes of more or less tabulated, and more or less reliable information. He learns the country to which

SÖUL FROM THE CITY WALL. Seen from the wall (a most wonderful wall which describes a circuit of 9975 paces), Söul looks like a bed of thriving mushrooms, mushrooms planted between the surrounding high hills, but grown in many places up on to those hills. Yes; they look very much like mushrooms, those low, one-storied houses, with their sloping, Chinese-like roofs, some tiled, some turfed, and all neutral tinted. The houses of Söul are as alike as mushrooms are, and as thickly planted. The wall d

KOREA’S KING. It has been with genuine indignation that I have recently read that the King of Korea is weak of mind and weak of character. Statements could scarcely have less foundation. Journalism is indeed an exacting profession, and the pressman who would wield an up-to-date pen must, once in a way, write glibly upon a subject of which he knows nothing, or less than nothing. But surely, if one chooses for one’s theme a person whom one has never seen, and of whom one knows nothing authenticall

KOREAN WOMEN. It has been very often said that the position of woman is more deplorable in Korea than in any other civilized or semi-civilized country. And I have comparatively little to urge against the statement. Certainly woman’s life seems narrower in Korea than in either China or Japan, or in Burmah, or Siam, or in India. Socially and politically, in Korea, woman simply does not exist. She has not even a name. After marriage she is called by her husband’s name with the prefix of Mrs. Before

KOREAN WOMEN—( continued ). Slight as is the visible part played by woman in Korea, yet there are an almost endless number of facts concerning her which are either significant or in themselves interesting. To me at least, woman, and the conditions of her life, together form the most interesting branch of the study of Korea. And even to those who take no deep interest in burning social questions, and whose interest in far-away lands scarcely exceeds an intelligent curiosity, any facts about Korea

KOREAN ARCHITECTURE. What her dress is to woman, his dwelling is to man. I am speaking, of course, of average man and of average woman. What she wears indicates what she is, and is the most natural, the most unconscious, and the most common expression of her individuality, and of her character. She, her very self, peeps from beneath the laces at her neck. The house in which he lives shelters his women and his young; the buildings which he erects, or helps to erect, indicate who and what he is, a

HOW THE CHINESE, THE JAPANESE, AND THE KOREANS AMUSE THEMSELVES. There is nothing else, I think, that so positively proves the intimate relationship of China, Japan, and Korea, as does the great similarity between their games and their amusements—a similarity which almost amounts to identicalness. If it is true that “ in vino veritas ,” it must be equally true that men are most natural when they are happiest, freest from care, and have neither business nor duties beyond recreating themselves. So

A GLANCE AT KOREAN ART. “Far Eastern art draws its inspiration from Nature, not from man. It thus stands, in the objects of its endeavour, in striking contrast to what has ever been the main admiration and study of our own, the human figure. A flower, a face—matter as it affects mind, mind as it affects matter—from such opposite sources spring the two. Art, or the desire to perpetuate and reproduce the emotions, must, of course, depend upon the character of those emotions. Now to a Far Oriental

KOREA’S IRRELIGION. Korea has no religion. This is a sweeping statement, I know, and one that is susceptible of a great deal of dispute, but I believe that in the main it is true. The books that have been written during the last hundred years about Korea teem with thick chapters on Korea’s religion, but for all that, I believe that Korea is without religion. There are without doubt Koreans who are deeply and genuinely religious, but they are so infinitesimal a fraction of the population of the p

KOREA’S HISTORY IN A NUTSHELL. In the tenth century Korea assumed its present boundaries, and for nine hundred years it has remained unchanged in its coast line, and its northern limits. Except on the north, Korea is surrounded by the sea, and its northern boundary is marked by the Yalu and the Tiumen rivers, that almost meet at two of their sources. For convenience in the recapitulation of Korea’s history—a recapitulation in which everything else must be sacrificed to brevity—the history of the

THE SCOURGES OF CHINA. It is the present war between China and Japan that has brought Korea to our general notice; has caused us to ask and learn something of where and what Korea is. It is this war that will largely open up Korea, directly or indirectly, to Occidental travellers, to Occidental adventurers, and to Occidental enterprise. Whatever the ultimate effect of the war upon Japan the effect will be far greater upon Korea, greater even than it will be upon China. China is a huge place, and

JAPAN’S INGRATITUDE. Japan is ungrateful. She always has been, and, I fear, always will be. She has achieved over an adversary, in most essentials abler than herself, a brilliant run of, at least temporary, victories, largely because she has adopted Western methods of warfare; and now she is celebrating the victory of her European-borrowed arms by slapping Europe in the face. How very like a woman! How very like Japan! The Emperor of Japan has politely informed us—cautiously informed us through