only, of the place, I, as luck would have
it, made the Dai butzu my headquarters. I know little about things
celestial, but certainly can imagine nothing less celestial on the face
of the earth than this house of the Great God at Chemulpo. The house had
apparently been newly built, for the rooms were damp and icy cold, and
when I proceeded to inspect the bed and remarked on the somewhat doubtful
cleanliness of the sheets, "They are quite clean," said the landlord;
"only two gentlemen have slept in them before." However, as we were so
near the New Year, he condescended to change them to please me, and I
accepted his offer most gracefully as a New-Year's gift.

"O Lord," said I with a deep sigh when the news arrived that no meat
could be got that evening, and the only provisions in store were "one
solitary tin, small size, of compressed milk."

"Mionichi nandemo arimas, Konban domo dannasan, nandemo arimasen":
"To-morrow you can have anything, but to-night, please, sir, we have
nothing." As I am generally a philosopher on such occasions, I satisfied
my present cravings with that tin of milk, which, needless to say, I
emptied, putting off my dinner till the following night.

Corea, as everybody knows, is an extremely cold country, the thermometer
reaching as low sometimes as seventy or even eighty degrees of frost; my
readers will imagine therefore how delightfully warm I was in my bed with
only one sheet over me and a sort of cotton bed-cover, both sheet and
bed-cover, I may add, being somewhat too short to cover my feet and my
neck at the same time, my lower extremities in consequence playing a
curious game of hide-and-seek with the support of my head. I had ordered
a cold bath, and water and tray had been brought into my room before I
had gone to bed, but to my horror, when I got up, ready to plunge in and
sponge myself to my heart's content, I found nothing but a huge block of
solid ice, into which the water had thought proper to metamorphose
itself. Bells there were none in the house, so recourse had to be made to
the national Japanese custom of clapping one's hands in order to summon
up the servants.

"He," answered the slanting-eyed maid from down below, as she trotted up
the steps. Good sharp girl that she was, however, she quickly mastered
the situation, and hurried down to fetch fresh supplies of unfrozen
liquid from the well; although hardly had she left the room the second
time before a thick layer of ice ag