gentleman. The Koreans seem quite unable to see this moving episode in more than one light, and they hold up their hands in wondering admiration, while all the time the story is exquisitely ironical.
There are numerous stories of the Lear type, where the favourite children desert their parent, while the one who had been the drudge turns out pure gold. There is quite a volume of Cinderella stories in which proud daughters come to grief in the brambles and have their faces scratched beyond repair, while the neglected one is helped by the elves and goblins and in the sequel takes her rightful place. But these stories are often marred by the careless way in which the successful one looks upon the suffering and perhaps the death of her humbled rivals.
Another common theme is that of the girl who refuses to marry any other man than the one, perhaps a beggar, whom her father had jokingly suggested as a possible husband for her. The prevailing idea in this is that the image once formed in a maiden's mind of her future husband is, in truth, already her husband, and she must be faithful to him. Such stories are a gauge of actual domestic life in Korea inversely to the degree of their exaggeration.
A favourite model is that of the boy who spends his whole patrimony on his father's funeral and becomes a beggar, but after a remarkable series of adventures turns up Prime Minister of the land. But in actual Korean life it has never been noted that contempt for money is a leading characteristic of officialdom. Far from it. There is also the type of the evil-minded woman who was found weeping upon her husband's grave, but when asked why she was inconsolable, she replied that she was moistening the grave with her tears so that the grass would grow the sooner, for only then could she think of marrying again.
Korea is rich in tales of how a man's honour or a woman's virtue has been called in question, and just as the fatal moment came the blow was averted by some miraculous vindication ; as when a hairpin tossed into the air fell and pierced the solid
