y any furniture. There are
no chairs. The people sit on mats on the floor. The walls between the
rooms are made of paper, and the floor is made of stone.

[Illustration: Korean Houses.]

They have a strange way of heating their houses. They have no stoves
or fireplaces. But under the floor they have a cellar like an oven.
In this cellar a fire is always kept, and the rooms are sometimes so
hot that the people can hardly walk on the stone floors.

People who are poor sleep on mats on the floor. They sleep in their
clothes. People who are rich have mattresses. The mattresses are laid
on the floor at night, and are taken up in the morning.

The people of Korea eat a great deal of rice. But they have other
kinds of food. They have meat and fish and eggs and also fruit. You
would think that they would use a great deal of tea, as they live so
near China. But they do not drink tea. They drink rice water instead.
The rice water is water that rice has been boiled in.

At their meals the men always eat first and the women wait on them.
When the men have eaten as much as they want, then the women and
children eat.

The tables they have are very low. It would not do for them to have
high tables, as they sit on the floor.

They have no knives or forks. They eat with spoons, and they use
chopsticks, as the Chinamen do.

They have no water-pipes in their houses. In the towns men carry water
in pails. They have no gas. For light at night they use candles.

They have only one kind of coin. It is a small piece of copper. It
has a square hole in the middle. They put these coins on strings and
carry them around their necks. It would take many such coins to make a
dollar.

[Illustration: Korean Money.]

There are farms in Korea, where they grow wheat, rice, rye, tobacco,
cotton, watermelons, and many kinds of fruit.

If you were in Korea, you would think it the strangest country in the
world. They do many things very unlike the way we do them. With us
bright-colored things are worn by women. In Korea the men wear bright
colors. They have a funny way of selling eggs there. They place ten
eggs end to end in a row, and put straw around them. Then they tie
strings around the straw between the eggs. This is called a stick of
eggs. When people go to buy eggs, they ask for one or two sticks, or
as many as they wish. One stick of eggs costs less than five cents.

[Illustration: A Stick of Eggs.]

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