I take note of many things which to-morrow might escape me.
Street life is one ever-flowing stream. In Seoul, I observe, everybody lives on the thoroughfares, and this is probably the reason why the roads are so wide and the dwellings so cramped. In this trait the Korean is like the Spaniard or Italian, for he is never so happy as when out of doors. There he stands on his threshold, or basking in the sunny courtyards; or he lights his pipe and strolls up and down for hours. His carriage is slow and stately. I wonder where he is going, and what he is thinking of—nowhere and of nothing. I should say, "Il flâne." There is no suitable word in another language for this aimless meandering. "Loitering" indicates only physical slowness, nor does even "to lounge or saunter" exactly convey the idea. Physical sluggishness and moral vacuum are not simultaneously connoted by them.
Now and again a private comes by. He is the coming man! If he learns nothing else in the barrack-yard, he certainly does learn how to walk.
His pigtail has been shorn off. At first he bemoaned it, for this antiquated head-dress of his embodied a general principle, and with its departure he was cut adrift from all his old associations and traditions; but, like the child he is at heart, he soon forgets his pigtail and its traditions along with it, and today is proud of the metamorphosis.
As the man of progress and of the future, he scorns the white coats, sandals, and hats, of his countrymen.
On reaching the hotel I find a gentleman awaiting me; it is the Minister of Great Britain. He has learnt of my arrival, and is come to offer me his hospitality, my country not having a legation in the city.
The Hôtel du Palais in Seoul is new and fairly well managed, and so I did not wish to put any one to inconvenience. The bishop being away, and having no legation, I was anxious to remain my own master. We never know when we may become a nuisance to the kindest of hosts. The pleasantness of a visit, after all, depends more on circumstances than on the host or guest.
All this I frankly explained, and in the end we made a compromise in such a way as not to disturb our daily programme. I was to be his guest, but each of us was to attend to his usual occupations, and we were to meet only at luncheon time. As for the afternoons, we left everything to circumstances.
The British Legation, on the other side of the new palace, is a pretty country mansion, with a loggia, built on a bank, and enclosed by a garden. The secretary's house stands in another part of the grounds, and at the entrance a pavilion for the guards is in course of construction.
The interior is typically English, the same as we find it in the houses of the well-to-do classes, whose root principle is, "My home is my castle." Among those with whom the family life is such a fine example of domestic virtues, the "home" strikes us very forcibly and with such graciousness. Indeed, the "home" idea is one of Great Britain's bulwarks.