tulated with, he will put on a look of injured innocence, and assert that he has been using the space for many years, in fact, since his father's time, and has a right to it. Not once but many times have I been obliged to nip this thing in the bud on streets leading to my own house. The little awning appears, and you bend aside to pass it, but if you are wise you will stop and see that it is removed ere it is too late. The street is also the depository of any and every kind of filth. Sooner or later it is trampled down by the hoofs of passing horses and is lost to sight ; but if it were not for the great army of scavenger hawks that keep eternal watch for tempting morsels, and that other army, of anaemic dogs, who live on the border line of famine, I do not know what would become of the people of any Korean town. If a Korean wants some dirt to make mud with which to plaster a wall or mend a smoke-flue, he simply goes out into the middle of the street and digs as much as he wants. No care is taken to fill up the hole, and time only accomplishes the feat. Scores of times I have come upon places where a hole had been dug in the street large enough to bury an ox. The people who took the soil away may obligingly deposit the sweepings of their yards there as a pretence to remove the serious obstruction, but it is mere pretence. So long as the vandal leaves a narrow path by which people can pass, there is likely to be no complaint at all. The principle seems to be that what belongs to nobody in particular is lawful loot for anybody.
No Korean house, however humble, is complete unless it is surrounded by a wall or a fence of some kind that cannot be seen through. The reason is twofold. It is necessary to screen the women from observation. This is the prime reason; and it is considered a serious misdemeanour to look over a wall or fence into your neighbour's yard. If it is necessary to mount the roof of a house for any purpose, it is obligatory upon the occupants of the house to give notice to all the neighbours, so that the women may get under cover and escape observation. The climbing of a wall is the act of a thief, and you will see Koreans
