Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/456

 "Tie a string around her wrist and pass one end through the partition." It was done, and the old man holding the end of the string described her symptoms exactly and wrote out a prescription which soon effected a cure. Compared with this, the recent discoveries of Marconi in wireless telegraphy seem but we must not digress.

As might be supposed, a descent in the social scale widens the field of the Korean woman's work. The middle-class woman can engage in all the occupations of her higher sister, excepting those of physician and teacher of Chinese literature. She may be the proprietress of any kind of shop, though she will not appear in person. She may " take in washing," which means carrying it to the nearest brook or to the neighbourhood wellcurb, where the water she uses speedily finds its way back into the well. She may act as cook in some well-to-do family, tend the fowls and pigs or do any other form of domestic service. Concubines are drawn almost exclusively from this middle class. They make combs, head-bands, tobacco-pouches and a thousand other little conveniences of the toilet, the wardrobe and the home in general. They are allowed certain fishing rights as well, though they are restricted to the taking of clams, cuttle-fish and beche-de-mer. The women on the island of Quelpart, off the southern coast, held until lately a peculiar position in this matter of fishing. The men stayed at home while the women waded into the sea or swam out from shore and gathered clams, pearl oysters and seaweed. As the women were always nude, there was a strict law that no man was to go within sight of the fishing grounds during the fishing hours. So these modern Godivas were the bread-winners, and as such claimed exceptional privileges, - so much so that the island bade fair to become a sort of gynecocracy. But this was all changed when Japanese fishermen appeared off the island. The women were driven out of business and the men sadly went to work. This dependence upon the women for a living was thoroughly in accord with the earliest tradition of the island, which says that three sages came