though more artistically clad,
are not a patch on the Venuses of Cho-sen, and both in respect of
lightness of complexion and the other above-named qualities they seemed
to me to approach nearest to the standard of European feminine beauty.
Their dress, as you may have judged by my rough description, is more
quaint than graceful, and cannot be said to be at all becoming;
nevertheless, when one's eyes have got accustomed to it, I have seen
girls look quite pretty in it. I remember one in particular, a concubine
of one of the king's ministers, whom I was fortunate enough to get to sit
for me. She did not look at all bad in her long blue veil gown, much
longer than the white one usually worn, which it covered, the white silk
trousers just showing over the ankles, and a pretty pair of blue and
white shoes fitting her tiny feet. She wore a little red jacket, of which
she seemed very proud, and she smoked cigarettes and a pipe, though her
age, I believe, was only seventeen.

Women of the commoner classes can always be detected, not only by the
coarser clothes they wear, but also by the way their hair is made up. Two
long tresses are rolled up on the back of the head into a sort of turban,
and though to my eye, innocent of the feminine tricks of hair-dressing,
it looked all real and genuine, and a curious contrast to the infinitely
less luxuriant growth of the better classes of women, I was told that a
good deal of braids and "stuffing" was employed to swell their coiffures
into the much-coveted fashionable size.

One very strange custom in Corea is the privilege accorded to women to
walk about the streets of the town at night after dark, while the men are
confined to the house from about an hour after sunset and, until lately,
were severely punished both with imprisonment and flogging, if found
walking about the streets during "women's hours." The gentler sex was and
is therefore allowed to parade the streets, and go and pay calls on their
parents and lady friends, until a very late hour of the night, without
fear of being disturbed by the male portion of the community. Few,
however, avail themselves of the privilege, for unfortunately in Corea
there are many tigers and leopards, which, disregarding the early closing
of the city gates, climb with great ease over the high wall and take
nightly peregrinations over the town, eating up all the dogs which they
find on their way and occasionally even human beings. Tigers have
actu