As a rule, we take such
things as matters of course, but when one comes over here into Asia
and into countries where the people have been cursed by corrupt
governments, where innocent lives have been taken upon the mere whim
of the government, where property has been confiscated with no better
reason, and where men have had to die for their faiths:--when he, in
short, comes into lands where the rights of neither life, property nor
conscience have been respected, he is likely to prize his American
privileges somewhat more highly.

{66}

The old Korean dynasty was not only corrupt, but unspeakably stupid.
Like the people, the King relied on sorcerers or fortune-tellers to
find a lucky day or a lucky time of the moon to do whatever he wished,
and in case of sickness consulted the mutang, or conjurer, instead of
a doctor. Thus when the prince had smallpox some years ago, the mutang
declared that the Smallpox Spirit or devil (who must always be
referred to with great respect as "His Excellency") would not leave
unless allowed to ride horseback clear to the Korean boundary, three
hundred miles away; and a gayly caparisoned horse was accordingly led
the entire distance for His Excellency, the Smallpox Spirit, to ride
away on!

The government was also unfeignedly corrupt. Offices were given, just
as lives were taken merely at the whim of the Throne. Taxes were
farmed out, the grafting collectors taking from the people probably
five or six times as much as finally reached the public treasury. More
than this, the nobility robbed the people at will, and there was no
authority from whom they could get redress. Woe unto the man who
became energetic and industrious under the old dispensation! First,
the tax-gatherers would relieve him of the bulk of his swollen
fortune, and what was left the noble or "Yang-ban," as a noble was
called, would take the trouble to borrow but never take the trouble to
repay. For the Yang-ban was a "gentleman," he was. It was beneath his
dignity to work--even to guide the reins of the horse he rode--but it
was not beneath his dignity to sponge on his friends (I think the verb
"to sponge" is too expressive to remain slang) or to borrow without
repaying. Moreover, in case of extremity, it is said that Mother
Yang-ban and Sister Ann might take in washing, as is recorded in the
classic lays of our own land, but Father never defiled himself by
doing anything so dishonorable as an honest day's work.

But a