1904.] on First Impressions of Seoul. 505 



for hours. His carriage is slow and stately. I wonder where he is 

 going to and what he is thinking of — nowhere and of nothing — " il 

 flane." There is no suitable word in another language for this 

 iiiinless meandering. " Loitering " indicates only physical slowness, 

 and moral vacuum is not simultaneously connoted by it. 



The Korean T. Atkins. 



Now and again a private comes by. He is the coming man ! If 

 he learns nothing in the barrack-yard, he does learn how to walk. 



He has had his pigtail shorn. At first he bemoaned it ; for this 

 head-dress of his embodied a general principle. With its departure 

 he was cut adrift from all his old associations and traditions. 



But like the child he is at heart, he soon forgets his pigtail and 

 its traditions along with it, and to-day is proud of the metamorphosis. 



As the man of progress and of the future he scorns the white 

 coats, sandals and hats of his countrymen. 



A Korean School. 

 From a small house at the corner a very babel of sound issues 

 forth. It is the inarticulate mechanical repetition of one chapter — 

 exactly the same method our own schoolmasters used to employ for 

 instilling knowledge. 



As the door in the courtyard is open I enter. In front of me 

 I find a room, not more than 10 feet square, in which ten or more 

 youngsters are crowded together. There they sit on the floor, dressed 

 in green instead of white, and their long hair hanging down in fine 

 plaits. 



Each has a big ABC book in his hand. Every word has a 

 difierent letter. These they repeat, and in this way knowledge is 

 driven into them. They pronounce everything out loud, moving all 

 the time the upper part of their body to right and left, backwards 

 and forwards. 



The dominie is seated in front ; he also is squatting on the floor. 

 His eyes are shielded by goggles of enormous size, and he wears on 

 his head a horse-hair crown. 



He is wisdom personified, outwardly at any rate. His thoughts 

 seem to be ranging far away in the distance, and from his Olympic 

 seat he casts an indifferent eye on his perspiring pupils. 



But, as a famous Chinese pedagogue says, Chinese spelling and 

 writing can only be mastered mechanically. His best scholar is the 

 jackass. 



The li. a Mission. 

 From there to the Mission is but a few yards. As I enter its 

 iron grilled gate my surprise is as great as agreeable. For I see 

 before me a grand cathedral, and on either side spacious buildings 

 standing in their own wooded grounds. 



It was built on the model of one of the old cathedrals in the 

 Netherlands— red brick, Gothic, a style I do not like to find in the 



