Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/459

 up from a hole in the ground and that each of them found a chest, floating in from the southeast, containing a colt, a dog, a calf, a pig and a woman!

Women of the middle class often become wet-nurses or enter a Buddhist convent, though by following the latter course they drop from the respectable class to the despised one. Others still become nain, or palace women. These are in some sort handmaidens of the queen and engage in embroidery and other fancy work under the eye of Majesty. Foreigners often make the mistake of supposing that this position is a disgraceful one, but these palace women are entirely respectable, and any delinquency on their part would be severely dealt with. The reluctance with which parents consent to their daughters becoming palace women is due to the fact that it postpones the date of marriage beyond the approved age. Many middle-class women are innkeepers. Travel on Korean roads usually averages thirty miles a day, and so the inns are numerous. The hostess has little difficulty in keeping the accounts. All she has to do is to watch the ricebag and the bean-bag, for food and fodder are the only things charged for in a Korean inn. Sleeping and stable room are thrown in gratis ; and we may add sotto voce that they are dear even at that price, at certain seasons of the year. If the hostess had to take charge of the sleeping arrangements, she would be unable to preserve the seclusion which is the sole badge of her respectability. Of all these occupations of middle-class women, there are only two to which low-class women are not eligible, those of palace woman and tobacco-pouch maker.

While middle-class women are thoroughly respectable, at least in theory, the women of the low class are entirely outside the social pale. They have practically no rights, though they manage to hold their own with remarkable pertinacity.

There are, first, those unfortunates called dancing-girls. The northern province of Pyeng-an takes the lead in supplying women to fill the ranks of this class. The girls are taken when very young and trained in all the meretricious arts of their