Our Little Korean Cousin | Page 3

how seriously he might offend her or
what naughty thing he might do.
One queer thing about Yung Pak was the way he used to wear his hair.
While still very young his head was shaved, except a little round spot
on the very crown. Here it was allowed to grow, and as years went by it
grew quite long, and was braided in two plaits down his back.
When Yung Pak grew to be a man the long hair was knotted up on top
of his head, and for this reason many people call Koreans "Top-knots."
But of this arrangement of the hair we shall tell more farther on.
CHAPTER II.
YUNG PAK'S HOME
Ki Pak, Yung Pak's father, was one of the king's officials. On this
account his home was near the great palace of the king, in the city of
Seoul, the capital of the country.

This city did not look much like the ones in which you live. There were
no wide streets, no high buildings, no street-cars. Instead, there were
narrow, dirty lanes and open gutters. Shopkeepers not only occupied
both sides of the crowded streets, but half their wares were exposed in
and over the dirty gutters. Grain merchants and vegetable dealers
jostled each other in the streets themselves. In and about among them
played the boys of the city, not even half-clothed in most cases. There
were no parks and playgrounds for them such as you have. Often, too,
boys would be seen cantering through the streets, seated sidewise on
the bare backs of ponies, caring nothing for passers-by, ponies, or each
other--laughing, chatting, eating chestnuts. Other boys would be
carrying on their heads small round tables covered with dishes of rice,
pork, cabbage, wine, and other things.
[Illustration: A STREET IN SEOUL]
Around the city was a great wall of stone fourteen miles in length. In
some places it clung to the edges of the mountains, and then dropped
into a deep ravine, again to climb a still higher mountain, perhaps. In
one direction it enclosed a forest, in another a barren plain. Great
blocks were the stones, that had been in place many, many years. It
must have taken hundreds and thousands of men to put them in position,
and, though the wall was hundreds of years old, it was still well
preserved. It was from twenty-five to forty feet high. The wall was
hung from one end of the city to the other with ivy, which looked as if
it had been growing in its place centuries before Yung Pak was born.
In the wall were eight gates, and at each one a keeper was stationed at
all hours of the day and night. No persons could come in or go out
unless their business was known to those who had charge of the
passage.
Every evening, at sunset, the gates were closed, and during the night no
one was allowed to pass through in either direction.
A curious ceremony attended the closing of these gates. They were
never shut till the king had been notified that all was well on the north,
on the south, on the east, and on the west. As there were no telegraph

lines, another way had to be provided by which messages might be
quickly sent. Bonfires upon the surrounding hills were used as signals.
By these fires the king was told if all were well in his kingdom, and
every evening, as soon as the sun was set, four beacon-fires on a hill
within the walls told the news as it was flashed to them from the
mountains outside. Then four officers, whose business it was to report
to the king the message of the fires, hastened to him, and with great
ceremony and much humility announced that all was well. On this the
royal band of music would strike up its liveliest airs, and a great bell
would toll its evening warning. This bell was the third largest in the
world, and for five centuries it had given the signal for opening and
closing the gates of Seoul, the chief city of the "Land of the Morning
Radiance."
At the stroke of the bell, with a great clang the gates were shut, and
strong bars were placed across the inner sides, not to be removed until
at early dawn the bell again gave its signal to the keepers.
To little Yung Pak, the loud tones of the bell meant more even than to
the sentinels at the gates. He knew that not only was it a signal for the
closing of the city gates, but it was also a warning that bedtime was at
hand.
The house in which Yung Pak lived was a very fine one, although the
grounds were not as spacious