Wonsan

“ Won-san is situated in the southern corner of the province of Ham-kyöng. A considerable portion of its trade is carried on with the closely adjoining divisions of Pyöng-an and Kang-won, the three provinces forming the northern half of the kingdom; their population is variously estimated [176] at between three and five millions. Mountains predominate in these districts. A bewildering tangle of wooded hills and bleak peaks meets the eye, jumbling and jostling one another in every direction until nothing is seen but broken mountains and ridges cleft into a thousand little valleys. ”

“ Back to Keijo and the Lady Om. Lord, Lord, she was a woman. For forty years she was my woman. I know. No dissenting voice was raised against the marriage. Chong Mong-ju, clipped of power, in disgrace, had retired to sulk somewhere on the far north-east coast. Yunsan was absolute. Nightly the single beacons flared their message of peace across the land. The Emperor grew more weak-legged and blear-eyed what of the ingenious deviltries devised for him by Yunsan. The Lady Om and I had won to our hearts’ desires. Kim was in command of the palace guards. ”

“ Wön-san has telegraphic communication with Seoul, and chiefly through the enterprise of the N.Y.K., it is connected by most comfortable steamers with Korean ports and with Wladivostok, Kobe, and Nagasaki, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Chefoo, Newchwang, and Tientsin. Steamers of a Russian line call there at intervals during the summer season. There are no Western merchants or Western residents except the missionaries and the Customs staff, and foreign trade is chiefly in the hands of the Japanese. ”

“ King Wan said, 'Alas! Alas! you (sovereign of) Yin-shang, (All round you) is like the noise of cicadas, Or like the bubbling of boiling soup. Affairs, great and small, are approaching to ruin, And still you (and your creatures) go on in this course. Indignation is rife against you here in the Middle Kingdom, And extends to the demon regions [2] .'
King Wan said, 'Alas! Alas! you (sovereign of) Yin-shang, It is not God that has caused this evil time, But it arises from Yin's not using the old (ways) . Although you have not old experienced men, There are still the ancient statutes and laws. ”

“ Wonota had to be coached over and over again in her scenes with Mr. Grand and Miss Keith. Both the latter were well-practised screen actors and could register the ordinary gamut of emotions as easily as they ate their breakfast or powdered their noses.
With Wonota, however, it was different. In the first place, she came of a tribe of people in whom it was bred to smother all expression of emotion—even the most poignant. Wonota almost worshiped her father; but did she ever look upon Chief Totantora with a smile of pride or with affection beaming in her eyes? ”

“ Straight away it let its topmost flower be picked and gave it to her.
At each and every branch, beautiful flowers blossomed
And the lotus became a flower that boasts of its fragrant scent.
Next, they met Jangsang, and he and Everyday
Became husband and wife, and knew ten thousand years of glory in this mortal world.
Today met Lady Baek [again]
And offered her one of the pearls as a token of thanks.
Then Today became a goddess of Jade Heaven.
This girl, Today, descended [11] into the human world
Went from temple to temple, and made people transcribe the Wontyeon'gang. ”

“ Came the time when our marriage was mooted—oh, quietly, at first, most quietly, as mere palace gossip in dark corners between eunuchs and waiting-women. But in a palace the gossip of the kitchen scullions will creep to the throne. Soon there was a pretty to-do. The palace was the pulse of Cho-Sen, and when the palace rocked, Cho-Sen trembled. And there was reason for the rocking. Our marriage would be a blow straight between the eyes of Chong Mong-ju. He fought, with a show of strength for which Yunsan was ready. ”

“ Kim was slowly crushed to death, bone by bone and joint by joint, by the torturers, and was a long time in dying. Hamel, whom Chong Mong-ju divined as my brains, was executed by the paddle—in short, was promptly and expeditiously beaten to death to the delighted shouts of the Keijo populace. Yunsan was given a brave death. He was playing a game of chess with the jailer, when the Emperor’s, or, rather, Chong Mong-ju’s, messenger arrived with the poison-cup. “Wait a moment,” said Yunsan. “You should be better-mannered than to disturb a man in the midst of a game of chess. ”

“ And while the messenger waited, Yunsan finished the game, winning it, then drained the cup. It takes an Asiatic to temper his spleen to steady, persistent, life-long revenge. This Chong Mong-ju did with the Lady Om and me. He did not destroy us. We were not even imprisoned. The Lady Om was degraded of all rank and divested of all possessions. An imperial decree was promulgated and posted in the last least village of Cho-Sen to the effect that I was of the house of Koryu and that no man might kill me. It was further declared that the eight sea-cunies who survived must not be killed. ”

“ Here indeed were the real treasures of Woon Yuen—what looked like the plunder of a thousand sultans' palaces and heathen temples. Idols in jade, gold, and ivory grinned at her, and a less sophisticated woman would have blushed at some of the figures, depicting Oriental gods and goddesses in amorous poses of an astonishing variety. ”

“ Today was kneeling on the ground. "From the human world a million leagues away
"One girl, just a girl, all alone and lonely, too,
"Crossed all sorts of hills and all sorts of waters and went through all sorts of suffering
"To come to this place because it was where my parents were from
"But they're as cold-hearted as this.
"My parents are going to be inside that gate
"And I've come all the way here, right in front of that gate
"And Everyday told me I'd achieve my dreams
"But the gods of Wontyeon'gang are so very pitiless." ”

“ Hanecy half expected a knife to leap forth as the man came close, but none came.
"Listen, heavenborn!" pursued the Korean eagerly. "You are a brave man and clever, and I hear you no ill-will, as I say. Now, I have learned why you are here and why the other foreign devil, who is also a merchant, is here. Indeed, he was inquiring for some one to take him tonight to the house of Tung Ho and Tung Fel, and I said nothing about knowing way thither." ”

“ This somewhat complicated system of occultism, if it may be so called, is ascribed to Won-wang, the heroic duke of a palatinate on the western frontier, who is supposed to have written its main text while being held in prison by Chou-sin, the vicious last monarch of the Shang dynasty, whose downfall was brought about by Won-Wang's son Wu-wang, the first emperor of the Chou dynasty in 1122 b.c, according to the Chinese standard chronology. ”

“ A week after the occurrence, I called Wan Lee into my office.
“Wan,” I said gravely, “I should like you to give me, for my own personal satisfaction, a translation of that Chinese sentence which my gifted countryman, the late godlike Webster, uttered upon a public occasion.” Wan Lee looked at me intently, and then the slightest possible twinkle crept into his black eyes. Then he replied with equal gravity,—
“Mishtel Webstel, he say, 'China boy makee me belly much foolee. China boy makee me heap sick.'” Which I have reason to think was true. ”

“ What do you do for a living? Tell me the truth now, and no dissembling.”
The scholar, frightened to death, replied, “My clan name is So-and-so, and my given name is So-and-so. I am so old, and I have lived for several generations at Yon-nan, Whang-hai Province. I am stupid and ill-equipped by nature, so have not done anything special. I have heard all my life that if you say your beads with love and pity in your heart you will escape hell, and so have given my time to calling on the Buddha, and dispensing alms.” ”

“ About 60 li from Wön-san are some large grass-covered mounds, of which the Koreans do not care to speak, as they regard them as associated with an ancient Korean custom, now looked upon as barbarous. During the last dynasty, and more than five centuries ago, it was customary, when people from age and infirmity became burdensome to their relations, to incarcerate them in the stone cells which these mounds contain, with a little food and water, and leave them there to die. ”

“ And I went with Wanza through the woods on many a trillium hunt.
Sometimes almost to breathlessness I felt Wanza’s charm, the galvanism she could always transmit to those with her intensified by some new strange quality I could not name. It was like a fillip given my dispassion. When she laughed and chirped to the squirrels, when she carried a wounded bird in her breast, when she stood on tip-toe, her face like a taper-flame, to greet the whole outdoors with wide-flung arms, I caught my lip between my teeth and watched her with observant eyes. Her beauty grew. Even Father O’Shan remarked it. ”

“ Wang Ken told Yung Pak that this was a monument to some famous Korean "doctor of literature."
On the first day's journey toward Chang-an-sa the party made good progress. The plan was to get to Yong-pyöng, about twenty miles from Seoul, before nightfall. To you this would seem a short day's journey, but when it is remembered that many of the servants were on foot, and that the little ponies were heavily loaded, it does not seem so strange that more ground could not be covered in one day. ”

“ It takes the cold patience of the Asiatic to conceive and execute huge and complicated conspiracies. The strength of Chong Mong-ju’s palace clique grew beyond Yunsan’s wildest dreaming. Chong Mong-ju corrupted the very palace guards, the Tiger Hunters of Pyeng-Yang whom Kim commanded. And while Yunsan nodded, while I devoted myself to sport and to the Lady Om, while Hendrik Hamel perfected plans for the looting of the Imperial treasury, and while Johannes Maartens schemed his own scheme among the tombs of Tabong Mountain, the volcano of Chong Mong-ju’s devising gave no warning beneath us. ”

“ I confess, though, that when we drew our heads together once more to plot and plan ways for accomplishing the great adventure Yong had outlined, that absurd twist of hair seemed to assume personality, and to take its place as a fourth party to our cabal. It lay under the night lamp where Bethell had thrown it, and, try as I would, I could not keep my eyes from its drab and snaky convolutions. Everything inanimate is perverse in the dreary lexicon of Korean demonology; a false curl dropped outside a door guarding treasonable conference was not an omen of joy. ”

“ Nevertheless, General Wan alone was neither driven off by the storm nor buried beneath the waves, but flew aloft and stood in the calm seclusion of the middle heaven. Here he was met by a sage named RyoTō-bin, who came soaring from the west. ”

“ Wênsiang, in short, suffered the fate of those who are too liberal and too far advanced for their surroundings, and became a martyr to his own disappointment. Old before his time, and overwhelmed with difficulties which he was unable to surmount, his mind became depressed, and his death in 1876 cost China the ablest, the best, and most devoted of her public men. No doubt there have been good and well-meaning men since his time, both in the Tsungli-Yamên, the Great Council, and in the provincial governments ”

“ Ay, we know you are a suitor, sir; Win and I both wish you well: By this license here, would you had her, that your two names were as fast in it as here are a couple! Win would fain have a fine young father-i’-law, with a feather; that her mother might hood it and chain it with mistress Overdo. But you do not take the right course, master Winwife.
Winw. No, master Littlewit, why?
Lit. You are not mad enough.
Winw. How! is madness a right course?
Lit. I say nothing, but I wink upon Win. You have a friend, one master Quarlous, comes here sometimes.
Winw. Why, he makes no love to her, does he? ”

“ Bethell? Well, he slashed and cut at inevitable destiny until Death put a hand on his pen and he lies somewhere under black cedars where the walls of Seoul climb the heights of Pukhan. Baron Yong is not of the world, either, for his head is tonsured, and at dawn, when all the bells of U—cham fling their clangorous voices against the mountains, he stands before the shrine of three hundred kings and chants: “Namu—Namu, Amida Butsu.” ”

“ He used frequently to say, “I am a magician only; Yun is a God.”
On a certain day Chon informed his wife that Yun would come that afternoon and try to kill him, “and so,” said he, “I shall change my shape in order to escape his clutches. If any one comes asking for me just say that I am not at home.” He then metamorphosed himself into a beetle, and crawled under a crock that stood overturned in the courtyard.
When evening began to fall a young woman [51] came to Chon’s house, a very beautiful woman too, and asked, “Is the master Chon at home?” ”

“ Mademoiselle Vo-Lon was very little like these graceful young women; these were the most charming types of Chinese beauty, while the other was an ugly specimen of the race. Then, the daughter of Vicente was a poor child of humble birth,—serious, shy, and hard-working,—whilst our visitors on this occasion had no trade but that of pleasing: to be pretty and seductive was their one pursuit in life; and, moreover, they were perfectly at home in all the engaging little ways and infantine coquetries which make the chief charm of the daughters of Han. ”