The Cloud Dream of the Nine | Page 2

Korean civilisation the more I respect it."
No man knows more of Korea or more deeply loves her people, and is
loved by them, than Dr. Gale. Japanese officials have also a sincere
regard for Dr. Gale. They have been accustomed to carry to him their
perplexity over Korean problems, just as the Korean has come to Gale
in his troubles with the Japanese. It is because of a combination of
social qualities with scholarship that Dr. Gale has been able so
convincingly to translate Far Eastern romance and character study.
* The Rev. James Scarth Gale, son of John Gale, a native of Aberdeen,
N.B., and Miami Bradt of Ontario. Born 1863. Published "Korean
Grammatical Forms," 1892; "The Vanguard: a Tale of Korea," 1894;
"Korean-English Dictionary," 1897; "Korean Sketches," 1898; "
Korean Folk Tales," 1913. For ten years was one of the translators of
the Bible into Korean. Married, first, the widow of Dr. Heron,
Physician to the Emperor of Korea; second, Ada Sale of Yokohama.
Presbyterian missionary since leaving the Toronto University.
[pxi]
All the literary interpretative work that Gale has done before the
present book--from the fascinating diary of a Korean general of a
thousand years ago, who wrote his impressions as he travelled through
Manchuria to pay his devoirs at the great court of China, to that literary
gem preserved in Gale's translation of the brief Petition of two aged
Korean Viscounts, who pleaded in terms of archaic simplicity with the
Japanese Governor-General Hasegawa to listen to the plaint of their

people for freedom--is so sincere, lucid, and impersonal, that the reader
knows that he is being given reality and not an adaptation.
Dr. Gale is the unhurried man who has time for every public behest.
Much of the hard literary work of his full day is done in the hours of
morning calm before the world has breakfasted. The chief native helper
of this quiet-eyed missionary in the work of translation has been with
him for thirty years. The unsought, almost unconscious influence of a
man like Gale justifies the hopes of the most old-fashioned believers in
Christian missions and lends romance to work that too often seems to
lead nowhere. Here is the real ambassador in a foreign land: that rare
thing the idealist and scholar who has an understanding of the small
things of life; the judicially-minded man who makes such deep
demands on principle that he draws all men to him.
III.--THE AUTHOR
Writing somewhere of the Korean love of literature, Dr. Gale says:
"Literature has been everything in Korea. The literati were the only
men privileged to ride the dragon up into the highest heaven. [pxii] The
scholar might not only look at the King, he could talk with him. Could
you but read, intone or expound the classics, you might materially be
dropping to tatters but still the world would wait on you and listen
regardfully to show you honour. Many an unkempt son of the literati
has the writer looked on with surprise to see him receive the respectful
and profound salutations of the better laundered classes. Korea is not
commercial, not military, not industrial, but she is a devotee of letters.
She exalts books."
I hear some traveller say: "What! Do you mean to suggest that those
funny chaps I saw in the streets of Seoul wearing baggy white trousers
and queer little Welsh hats, who sat around in lazy groups smoking
long pipes and looking into nowhere, have a literature? I always
understood that the Japanese had an awful time cleaning up their
country and getting them to bury their dead. I've always heard that if it
weren't for Japanese money and hustle the Koreans would be nothing
but walking hosts of smallpox and plague germs."

And the traveller would be wrong.
"The Cloud Dream of the Nine" lures the reader into mysterious vales
and vistas of remotest Asia and opens to him some of the sealed
gateways of the East.
The seventeenth-century author, Kim Man-Choong, mourned all his
life that he should have been born after his father had died. So
remarkable was his filial piety that his fame as a son spread far and
wide.
In his devotion to his mother, Yoon See, he never left her side except
on Court duty. He would entertain [pxiii] her as did those of ancient
days who "played with birds before their parents, or dressed and acted
like little children." In his efforts to entertain his mother Kim
Man-Choong would read to her interesting stories, novels and old
histories. He would read far into the night to give her pleasure, and his
reward was to hear her laugh of joyful appreciation.
But there came a day when Kim Man-Choong was sent into exile. His
mother's words were: "All the great