492 
PROCEEDIN' (IS OF SECTION - E. 
Again, the Corean is very generous; as long as he has a pound 
of rice he will give a meal to a poorer neighbour or even a stranger. 
It is Corean custom that any Corean may claim a gratuitous meal 
and a gratuitous night’s lodging from any other Corean. Some of 
the poorer Coreans live a life of wandering, and the only expense they 
incur is for their clothes. 
So poor and proud are the Coreans that when they come to 
Soul they hire fashionable clothes in which to swagger through the 
streets of the capital. The letting out of such clothes is a lucrative 
trade. 
AVith such a habit of helping each other, it is not wonderful that 
the Coreans have very indistinct ideas of the difference between meum 
and tunm, and are apt not only to help others but also to help them- 
selves in a way we Westerners, who are more alive than they to the 
rights of individual property, do not approve of. Any article without 
a visible owner is taken by the first comer. Thus, if one leaves one’s 
house deserted or one’s field uncultivated, the first person who comes 
by may take possession of it. Just after the taking of the palace, on 
the 23rd of July, 1894, a Corean came to me and said, “This is very 
bad ; my family greatly fears and is going to run away.” “ Well,” I 
said, “your family will come back.” “ Yes,” he said, “but I fear 
someone else may come and take my bouse, for it is a Corean custom 
that anyone may take au empty house unless some living thing, like 
a dog or a cat, is left in it. I have not a dog or a cat, so I intend to 
leave my wife’s mother in the house.” And then, after a pause, 
“She is an old woman and may die before we come back.” 
A friend of mine had a stable in his compound, some way from 
his house, which he did not often visit, as he did not keep horses. His 
story is best told in his own words. He is an Irishman, by-the-by. 
“ I went to my stable and found it was not there.” The Coreans, 
seeing the stable unoccupied, had helped themselves, first to the tiles 
of the roof, then to the rafters and bricks from the walls, and lastly 
to the tiles of the floor, until all vestige of that stable had disap- 
peared — “ Evasit erupit et non est invenius .” 
The King has three palaces in Soul, which I will call A, B, and 
C. Early this spring His Majesty determined to repair palace C ; and 
as palace A was not occupied at the moment, hedetermiued to get the 
tiles and beams be wanted for palace C by partly pulling down palace 
A. The King’s officers having helped themselves to what the King 
and they wanted, the people had their turn, and, without the least 
opposition or question, openly helped themselves to the remains of the 
palace outbuildings, and in a few weeks they had as completely dis- 
appeared as my friend’s stable. Yet that the Coreans are not a dis- 
honest people is proved by the fact that packages could, before the 
Japanese invasion of 1894, he sent from one end of the country to the 
other in charge of the ordinary street porter without the slightest 
danger of anything being stolen. It was a common thing for the 
shopkeeper, after laying out his wares of fruit, fish, tobacco, sweets, 
vegetables, <fcc., on a stall with a tray beside it to receive money, to 
leave his stall for the rest of the day. The passers-by would help 
themselves to the articles wished, and throw the price on to the open 
tray, money and goods being left unguarded till the vendor returned 
