Page:Revolution and Other Essays.djvu/286

 impelled by insatiable curiosity for a "look see." But it is curiosity merely — a timid, deerlike curiosity. He is prepared to bound away on his long legs at the first hint of danger or trouble.

Northern Korea was a desolate land when the Japanese passed through. Villages and towns were deserted. The fields lay untouched. There was no ploughing nor sowing, no green things growing. Little or nothing was to be purchased. One carried one's own food with him, and food for horses and servants was the anxious problem that waited at the day's end. In many a lonely village not an ounce nor a grain of anything could be brought, and yet there might be standing around scores of white-garmented, stalwart Koreans, smoking yard-long pipes and chattering, chattering — ceaselessly chattering. Love, money, or force could not procure from them a horseshoe or a horseshoe nail.

"Upso," was their invariable reply. "Upso," cursed word, which means "Have not got."

They had tramped probably forty miles that day, down from their hiding-places, just for a "look see," and forty miles back they would cheerfully tramp, chattering all the way over what they had seen.