Page:Korea (1904).djvu/93

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ORIGIN
41

become attached to the households of the upper classes. From their subsequent appearance in the street, when they run beside the chairs of their mistresses, it is quite evident that they are taught to be clean and even dainty in their appearance. At this youthful age they are quaint and healthy looking children. The conditions under which they live, however, soon produce premature exhaustion.

Despite the introduction of certain reforms, there is still much of the old world about Seoul, many relics of the Hermit Kingdom. Women are still most carefully secluded. The custom, which allows those of the upper classes to take outdoor exercise only at night, is observed. Men are, however, no longer excluded from the streets at such hours. The spectacle of these white spectres of the night, flitting from point to point, their footsteps lighted by the rays of the lantern which their girl-slaves carry before them, is as remarkable as the appearance of Seoul by daylight, with its moving masses all garmented in white. A street full of Koreans aptly suggests, as Mr. Henry Norman, M.P., once wrote, the orthodox notion of the Resurrection. It cannot be denied that the appearance of both men and women makes the capital peculiarly attractive. The men are fine, well-built and peaceful fellows, dignified in their bearing, polite and even considerate towards one another. The type shows unmistakable evidences of descent from the half savage and nomadic tribes of Mongolia and Northern Asia and the Caucasian peoples from Western Asia.

These two races, coming from the North in the one case and drifting up from the South in the other, at the time of the Ayraan invasion of India, peopled the north and south of Korea. Finally merging among themselves, they gave to