this, if it
were not for the fact that a visit to this freak of nature, has,
according to Corean accounts, the property of curing the worst of
tooth-aches. Though I was not myself afflicted with the complaint in
question, I went one afternoon to witness the pilgrimage that takes place
every day to this miraculous spot. A little altar stands at the foot of
the huge tooth, and numberless tablets, certifying to cures, erected by
thankful noble visitors and others, are fixed against the rock, with the
name, date and year when the cures were effected.

As I stood there, I could not help laughing at the sight of the crowds of
men and women with swollen cheeks, bandaged up in cotton wool and
kerchiefs, apparently undergoing excruciating agonies through coming out
on so cold a day. One after the other they came up, first paying their
chin-chins in front of the altar, and then depositing on it what _cash_
they could afford; after which they proceeded to rub one cheek after the
other on the Tooth-stone, just as "puss" rubs herself against your legs
when you stroke her head. The bandages had, of course, to be removed
before the balloon-like cheek could be rubbed on the frozen stone, and to
watch the different expressions of relief or increased pain upon their
ill-balanced, inflamed faces, gave me as much amusement as any show that
I have ever witnessed. Should the pain have temporarily disappeared, the
man in charge of the _miracle_ would make it his duty to try and extract
more money from the person cured; if, instead of that, the pain had
increased, which was generally the case, then, again, he would impress on
the agonised sufferer that had he paid a larger sum in the beginning the
gods would not have been vexed at his meanness and the pain would have
disappeared. Let him, therefore, now pay more _cash_ by way of making up
for it, and try again! It is wonderful, too, how shallow people are when
they have a pain anywhere!

CHAPTER XV

Police--Detectives--The plank-walk--The square board--The wooden blocks
for hands and feet--Floggings--The bamboo rod--The stick--The flexible
board--A flogging in Seoul--One hundred strokes for three-halfpence
--Wounds produced--Tender-hearted soldiers--Imprisonment--Exile--Status
of women, children and bachelors--Guilds and the law--Nobles and the
law--Serfdom--A mild form of slavery.

Should you happen to be one of the tender-hearted sort, please pass this
chapter and the next over,