Korea's exceptional geographical position, its natural wealth, and inborn physical strength, should tend to make her in the extreme Far East a sort of buffer state, and a bulwark of international good fellowship and established peace.
Nations, like individuals, have their moral codes and vocations. Nemesis must always overtake evil of every kind, and to the virtuous alone is granted the palm of victory.
SEOUL, THE CAPITAL OF KOREA
I have arrived safely in Seoul. It is eventide, and the moon is just appearing. In the dimness the most desolate imperial residence in the world seems still more desolate, more wretched, miserable, and forlorn.
My sedan-chair is being carried through a long street, or rather road, of small houses—but houses they cannot be called: those I have seen up to the present can at the best be termed hovels.
At last we reach the walls of the inner city—for till now we have been merely in the outer town. The wall is ragged and thorny. In front stand a number of roofed and painted gates. I almost imagine myself back in Pekin, for the picture is a replica, but in miniature. I am, however, unable in the dusk to see how much smaller it is, only the general effect is the same, stamped with the familiar Chinese characteristics.
