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CHAPTER I.
A Few Words about Hamel[1]
CHAPTER II.
Some Curious Korean Customs[20]
CHAPTER III.
Söul from the City Wall[34]
CHAPTER IV.
Korea’s King[58]
CHAPTER V.
Korean Women[75]
CHAPTER VI.
Korean Women (continued)[122]
CHAPTER VII.
Korean Architecture[161]
CHAPTER VIII.
How the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans Amuse Themselves[189]
CHAPTER IX.
A Glance at Korean Art[209]
CHAPTER X.
Korea’s Irreligion[226]
CHAPTER XI.
Korea’s History in a Nutshell[245]
CHAPTER XII.
The Scourges of China[266]
CHAPTER XIII.
Japan’s Ingratitude[278]
Glossary[305]

QUAINT KOREA.

CHAPTER I.

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 were alone. But to-night, with the spoiled woman sitting between them, neither seemed to have a word to say. Perhaps they both felt embarrassed by what to both of them must have seemed the ridiculousness of the situation.

The junk had left Shanghai a few days before. It was bound for Korea, where the mandarin was going on business—on business for the Emperor of China. The party on the boat, not to mention servants and such, included the mandarin, the mandarin’s wife, the Englishman, the Englishman’s wife, and a young man named John Stewart-Leigh.

As I have said, his excellency the mandarin was going to Korea on business. The spoiled woman was going for pleasure; her husband was going because he thought he ought to, and the mandarin’s wife was going because she had to. Stewart-Leigh would probably have found it very hard to tell even himself just why he was on board. “It’s as good a way of spending my leave as another, since I am too poor to go home just now,” he had said to a brother subaltern in Hong Kong, “and it will be a perfect charity to Q.”

Mr. Q., the spoiled woman’s husband, had been stopped by a friend a few weeks before as he came down the steps of the Shanghai club.

“I say, Q.,” cried the other, “what is this? I hear that you are going to Korea, and in his junk, with Ja Hong Ting. I say, it isn’t true, is it?”