The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1904-02-23

was a massive stone affair with pom
derous wooden doors sheathed in iron
four inches thick, now swung back to
admit the human tide of uay. From it
on either hand stretched away the
city wall. topping an encircling belt of
hills in whose hold lay the city itself.
Crenellated battlements tipped it's top
and could be made out as they ran,
now up now down, into the distance.
Through the gate poured a stream of
folk clad as it seemed to the stranger
in their night-clOthes, long flowing
white tunics, boat-like boots and horse
hair Laputa-wise hats. And they found
him every whit as strange as he did
them. He, on his part, felt himself
standing as a dream cOnjured into
reality from tie pages of Scheherazade.
In the passers-by he recognized the
figures familiar in the book, and as he
stared at the latticed easements near
him he half expected to see a small
fair hand thrust out. Never, to him
at least, did sight call up such instancy
of expectation. For he was gazing
upon what had slept undisturbed by
foreigners from the time when such
adventures were.
Below stretched the city--a sea of
tiled roofs, from out whose billowy ex-
panse rose here and there a palace. OF
temples there were none. This omis-
sion marked a curious decree For some
hundreds of years now no priest has
been permitted to set foot within any
Korean town. Reasons for the de-
cree differ. Some say that at the
last invasion by the Japanese, the in
vaders, by adopting the garb of monks
got access to the citadels, since which
time not even real monks have been
granted admission. Others ascribe it
to one of those internal strifes which
periodically convuIse official Korea, in
which the Chinese or Buddhist party
was worsted and the priests in conse-
quence forbidden the towns.
Struggling arteries of travel travers-
ed the place dotted with the white
robed folk, and here and there a pack
horse. But of carriages none, not even
the jinrikisha or grown-up baby car
riage of Japan. over this ghnted the
morning sun, conspiring with the Sc
date demeanor of the people to steep
the place in soporific charm
Sunk,-in seclusion and lying at the
outposts of the day, the Koreans call
their kingdom the Land of the Morning
Calm. And the country and it's people
fit both adjective and noun. Change
has passed them by, and time itself
stood still. They are today what they
were five hundred years ago. In large
part they reproduce the customs of the
Ming dynasty of China, the dynasty
called bright. which they copied then
and from enertia retain. Stagnant as we
regard China to be, that land is pro-
gres itself compared with Korea.
They would seem but to have follow
ed nature. or nature mas made this
the land of her survivals. Living
there today, quite peacefully for them
selves # less so for its other inhabi-
tants, are two animals, the direct des-
cendants of tertiary times. In spite of
climate like that of our New England
and the Middle States, the tiger and
leopard are still denizens of the land.
Both date from the era when the rhino-
ceros laved himself in the Thames, and
before the mammoth lay down to sleep
forever in the Siberian steppes In
the warm era which preceded the gla-
cial epoch, the tiger roamed far north,
we find fossil today, then, as the cold
came on, he was forced south. Some
of the animals were pushed straight
on and found themselves at last in In
dia; others, turning to the eastward
slightly, entered the peninsula of Ko-
the latter tarried, and as the cold in
tains, there was no escape. So there
the latter TRIED and as the cold in
creased simply grew longer fur to pro-
tect themselves and there they have
stayed till the present day.
Added to anachronism was another
quality to give oddly to these folk
an antlpodal inversion of everyday
life. Their manners and customs were
the opposite of our own. They shook
their own hands, not yours, on making
your acquaintance; they took off their
boots, not their hats, on entering your
house; man, not woman, was the i'm
pOrtant figure in social life; and they
worshipped their ancestors, not, Anne
rican- wise, their descendants. They
wrote backwards; they read backwards
their thoughts sped backwards. The
past was their paragon, not the future.
Confucius was the guiding star of their
lives, and the Confucian ethics their
only law. What they had learnt had
been an heirloom from the far past,
and they had never deemed anything
worth the acquiring since. The Chi
nese classics were to them the road
alike to pleasure, pelf and fame. To
become a Bachelor of Arts was the goal
to which all the higher classes should,
and any of the lower might, aspire.
The present accurate knowledge of
printed past inaccuracies known there
as learning was to them the only good
and led directly to the goods of others.
For a Bachelors degree was the step
ping-stone to a magistracy, and ma
gistracy meant any amount of material
acquisitions. Once seated in that
chair, a man could squeeze the people
at his pleasure. Which is the reason
the people are so poor.
To be Bachelor of anything but
Arts, however, is a thing a Korean
hastens to avoid. 1t is not that he is