[Illustration: Korean Girls Ironing Clothes.]
The houses in Korea are one or two stories high. They are made of wood or clay, and sometimes the roofs are of straw. The windows are high, and the doors are often so low that the people have to stoop down to go in. The rooms are very small and have hardly any furniture. There are no chairs. The people sit on mats on the floor. The walls between the rooms are made of paper, and the floor is made of stone.
[Illustration: Korean Houses.]
They have a strange way of heating their houses. They have no stoves or fireplaces. But under the floor they have a cellar like an oven. In this cellar a fire is always kept, and the rooms are sometimes so hot that the people can hardly walk on the stone floors.
People who are poor sleep on mats on the floor. They sleep in their clothes. People who are rich have mattresses. The mattresses are laid on the floor at night, and are taken up in the morning.
The people of Korea eat a great deal of rice. But they have other kinds of food. They have meat and fish and eggs and also fruit. You would think that they would use a great deal of tea, as they live so near China. But they do not drink tea. They drink rice water instead. The rice water is water that rice has been boiled in.
At their meals the men always eat first and the women wait on them. When the men have eaten as much as they want, then the women and children eat.
The tables they have are very low. It would not do for them to have high tables, as they sit on the floor.
They have no knives or forks. They eat with spoons, and they use chopsticks, as the Chinamen do.