Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/505

 in our culinary metaphor. How true it is the world over that "Where there are no tigers, wild-cats will be very selfimportant." This illustrates the man who is clothed with a little brief authority, or, in part, the fact that " When the cat 's away, the mice will play." The idea that we try to convey in the classical allusion to " the Greek calends " the Korean expresses in the more homely way, " Like blood in a bird's foot." The universal desire to escape responsibility is shadowed forth in the proverb, " The cook blames the table because he cannot pile the food high." The skill of a Korean cook is proven by his ability to make a pyramid of cakes or sweetmeats two or three times as high as the diameter of the plate. If he fails, he will say that the plate is crooked. " Even beggars sometimes feast their friends " corresponds to our " Every dog has his day." Excessive caution is illustrated by the hyperbole, " He would not walk beneath the city wall with a load of rotten eggs." The extremely small value of the load and the extremely small liability of the wall falling and crushing them show the measure of the man's timidity. We sometimes enumerate our barnyard fowl before their incubation, and in the same way the Korean says that some people " Make the baby-clothes before the wedding." It is a profound truth that has many close applications that " The horse will be tripped up if you tether it with too long a rope." Many a rich man's son has proved this to be true, not in Korea only. We say truly that "A scalded cat fears the fire," and the Korean is just as near the truth when he affirms that "A man that has once been frightened by a tortoise will jump every time he sees a kettle cover." One of the most expressive of Korean proverbs characterises the fickle man as "The character wul written on chamois skin." Now this character wul is 曰; but if you write it on chamois skin and then stretch the skin vertically, it will become 日, which is the character il, an entirely different thing. It reminds us of Polonius and the cloud which looked now like a camel, now like a weasel and anon like a whale.

These are only a very few of the commoner proverbs that