Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/124

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Village Life in Korea.

wants a daughter-in-law and has the cash will do well to call upon this man of business, as he will likely find him in the notion to trade. In many instances the cash capital required will not be great. A man in my employ came to me once with the request for an advance on his next month's pay of about two dollars. On inquiring what he wanted with so much money, he said that he had a chance to buy a daughter-in-law for that amount. I refused to advance the money for this cause and exhorted him to give up any such idea; but it was all in vain, for only a few days had gone by when I noticed a nice little girl at his house, and I understood full well what it meant. The girl had been bought and taken to his house, where she would grow up with his own children, including the boy that was to be her lord and master. I may add just here that after about five years in the home the marriage was celebrated in due form. Some one has said that there is at least one compensation in this method of bringing the girls into the home of the husband to be trained by his mother — that in after years, when his food is not prepared to suit him, he cannot say: "It is not like mother did it."

These girl wives are literally the slaves of the household into which they are carried. The mother-in-law rules with a hand of iron and a rod of steel. Many women have two, three, four, or more of these young daughters-in-law under their care, and take peculiar pleasure in making them understand what is what and who is who. Either before marriage or after, it is all the same; the girls are bound by the law of obe-