Nor shall one forget an evening at Wanju; a hundred miles from Seoul; sitting in the Mission House looking down into that village of a hundred thousand souls; watching the fires of evening lighted; watching a blanket of gray-blue smoke slowly lift over that little village; watching the great round moon slowly rise above a jutting peak beyond the village to smile down on that quiet, peaceful scene in mid-December.
Koreans never light their fires until evening comes and then they light a fire at one end of the house, under the floor and the smoke and heat travel the entire length of the house warming the rooms. It is a poor heat maker but it is a picturesque custom.
Thousands of flames lighted up the sky that night. The little thatch houses, and the children in their quaint garbs moving against the flames composed a strange Oriental Rembrandt picture.
* * * * * *
Streets! Streets! Streets!
Lights! Lights! Lights!
Somehow streets and lights go together.
We think of our great Broadway. We smile at our superior ingenuity when we think of the "Great White Way."
But for sheer beauty; fascinating, captivating, alluring, beauty; give me the Ginza in Tokyo on a summer evening; with its millions of twinkling little lights above the thousands of Oriental shops; with the sound of bells, the whistle of salesmen, the laughter of beautiful Japanese girls; the clacking of dainty feet in wooden shoes; and the indefinable essence of romance that hovers over a street of this Oriental type at night. I'll stake the romance, and beauty of the Ginza in Tokyo, against any street in the world. He who has looked upon the Ginza by night, has a Flash-Light of Flame; of tiny, myriad little flaming lights; burned into his memory; to live until he sees at last the lighted streets of Paradise itself.
* * * * * *