is
host on his good fortune of possessing it.

We have now examined all the various striking features characteristic of
the Corean household. Let us, then, now go outside again. The streets of
the town could not be more tortuous and irregular. With the exception of
the main thoroughfares, most of the streets are hardly wide enough to let
four people walk abreast. The drainage is carried away in uncovered
channels alongside the house, in the street itself; and, the windows
being directly over these drains, the good people of Cho-sen, when inside
their homes, cannot breathe without inhaling the fumes exhaled from the
fetid matter stagnant underneath. When rain falls, matters get somewhat
better; for then the running water cleans these canals to a considerable
extent. During the winter months, also, things are passable enough, for
then everything is frozen; but, in the beginning of spring, when frozen
nature undergoes the process of thawing, then it is that one wishes to be
deprived of his nose. At the entrance of each house a stone slab is
thrown across to the doorway so as to cover the ditch. Only the
foundations of the town houses are made of solid stone, well cemented,
but in the case of country dwellings these are extended upwards so as to
make up one-half of the whole height, the upper part being of mud, stuck
on to a rough matting of bamboos and split canes.

CHAPTER X

A Corean marriage--How marriages are arranged--The wedding ceremony--The
document--In the nuptial-chamber--Wife's conduct--Concubines--Widows
--Seduction--Adultery--Purchasing a husband--Love--Intrigue--Official
"squeezing"--The cause.

Among the several misfortunes, or fortunes, if you prefer the word, with
which a Corean man has to put up is an early marriage. He is hardly born,
when his father begins to look out for a wife for him, and scarcely has
he time to know that he is living in the world at all than he finds
himself wedded.... The Coreans marry very young. I have seen boys of ten
or twelve years of age who had already discarded the bachelor's long
tress hanging down the back, and were wearing the top-knot of the married
man. It must not be supposed, however, that these youthful married men
are really wedded in the strict sense of the word, for, as a matter of
fact, though husband and wife in the eyes of the world, the two do not
live together till the age of puberty is reached. In other words, the
marriage is for several years o