a time on his
bony legs and toeless feet, keeping his balance with a long crutch, which
he held under his arm, and he had a sort of wooden cup attached by a
string to his neck, into which people might throw their charities. "He is
a leper," a Corean, who stood by my side and had noticed the
ever-increasing expression of horror on my face, informed me.

The man, or rather the scarecrow, for he hardly had any more the
resemblance to a human being, hearing the noise of the crowd that was
round me, moved in my direction. He staggered and dragged himself till he
got quite close, then bending his trembling head forward, made the utmost
efforts to see, just as a bat does when taken out into the daylight. Poor
fellow! he was also very nearly blind. His efforts to speak were painful
beyond measure. A hoarse sound like the neighing of a pony was all that
came out of his throat, and each time he did this, shrieks of laughter
rose from the crowd, while comical jokes and sarcastic remarks were
freely passed at the thinness of his legs, the condition of his skin, and
the loss of the lower half of his face. Oh! it was shocking and
revolting, though it must be said for them that the same people who
chaffed him were also the first ones to fill his little pot with cash.

Now, you must not think that I have told you this story to make your hair
stand on end, for that is not my intention at all; but simply to prove to
you the anomaly that a Corean is not really cruel when he is cruel, or
rather when he appears to us to be cruel. This sounds, I believe, rather
extraordinary to people who cannot be many-sided when analysing a
question, but what I mean is this: It must not be forgotten that
different people have different customs and different ways of thinking;
therefore, what we put down as dreadful is often thought a great deal of
in the Land of the Morning Calm.

"Why not laugh at illnesses, death, and deformity?" I once heard a Corean
argue.

"It does not make people any better if you sympathise with them; on the
contrary, by so doing you simply add pain to their pain, and make them
feel worse than they really are. Besides, illnesses help to make up our
life, and it is our duty to go through them as merrily as through those
other things which you call pleasures. We people of Cho-sen do not look
upon illnesses, accidents, or death as misfortunes, but as natural things
that cannot be helped and must be bravely endured; what better, then,