he top and bottom.
In the centre is a very pretty, simple frieze, on the inside of which are
some Corean characters.

If a Corean house does not look very inviting when you look at it from
the outside, still less does it when you are indoors. The smallness of
the rooms and their lack of furniture, pictures, or ornaments are
features not very pleasant to the eye. The rooms are like tiny boxes,
between eight and ten feet long, less than this in width and about seven
feet high. They are white all over with the exception of the floor, which
is covered with thick, yellowish oil-paper. The poorest kind of Corean
house consists of only a single room; the abode of the moderately
well-off man, on the other hand, may have two or three, generally three
rooms; though, of course, the houses of very high offices are found with
a still larger number.

The Corean process of heating the houses is somewhat original. It is a
process used in a great part of Eastern Asia--and, to my mind, it is the
only thoroughly barbaric custom which the Corean natives have retained.
The flooring of the rooms consists of slabs of stone, under which is a
large oven of the same extent as the room overhead, which oven, during
the winter, is filled with a burning wood-fire, which is kept up day and
night. What happens is generally this: The coolie whose duty it is to
look after this oven, to avoid trouble fills it with wood and dried
leaves up to the very neck, and sets these on fire and then goes to
sleep; by which means the stone slabs get heated to such an extent that,
sometimes, notwithstanding the thick oil paper which covers them, one
cannot stand on them with bare feet.

The Corean custom is to sleep on the ground in the padded clothes, using
a wooden block as a pillow. The better classes, however, use also small,
thin mattresses, covered with silk, which they spread out at night, and
keep rolled up during the day-time. As the people sleep on the ground, it
often happens that the floor gets so hot as to almost roast them, but the
easy-going inhabitant of Cho-sen, does not seem to object to this
roasting process--on the contrary, he seems almost to revel in it, and
when well broiled on one side, he will turn over to the other, so as to
level matters. While admiring the Coreans much for this proceeding, I
found it extremely inconvenient to imitate them. I recollect well the
first experience which I had of the use of a "Kan," which is the native
name o