the different plates to prevent flies from
eating the sweets. Lastly, we have the military priests, who follow the
army to offer up prayers when at war and during battles, and who don hats
of the ordinary shape worn by every one else except that they have round
crowns instead of almost cylindrical ones. These alone are occasionally
allowed to enter the towns. Paper sandals are the foot-gear chiefly in
use among them.

Whenever I visited a monastery, I found the monks most civil and
hospitable, although naturally they expect something back for their
hospitality. I hardly had time to pay my chin-chins to all of them,
folding my hands and shaking them in front of my forehead, bent forward,
before a tray of eatables, such as beans, radishes and rice in pretty
brass bowls would be produced, and a large cup of wine offered, out of
which latter the whole company drank in turn. They took much interest in
my sketching, and all insisted on being portrayed. Many of them possessed
a good deal of artistic talent, and it is generally by their handiwork
and patience that the images and statues in the temples are produced.
Among them were some very intelligent faces, somewhat _abruties_, to use
a French word, owing to the life they lead, but exceedingly bright and
cheery withal, and often very witty, when one came to talk with them. As
for shrewdness and quickness of perception I know no person who has these
better at his command than the Corean Buddhist priest.

[Illustration: A NUNNERY]

There are also in Corea nunneries for women who desire to follow a
religious life. Curiously enough, contrary to the rule with us, the
Corean nuns are more emancipated than the rest of the native women. To
begin with, they dress just in the same way as do the monks, shave their
heads like them; and being, moreover, of a cast of countenance
exceedingly ugly and not at all feminine, they might quite well, from the
appearance of their faces, be taken to belong to the stronger sex. A good
many of them, contrary to the case of the monks, impressed me as being
afflicted with mental and bodily sufferings, and in several cases they
even appeared to me to be bordering on idiocy. They always, however,
received me kindly, and showed me their convents, with cells in which
two or three nuns sleep together. They were not quite so careless as the
monks about the duties of religion, and at the little temple close by
there was a continual rattling of the gong, a b