Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/547

 people. In the rear of all come a company of foreign-drilled troops who present a striking contrast to the medieval pageant that has gone before.

The cost of such a funeral varies with circumstances. If it is a king that is being buried, it may cost half a million dollars, but in case it be a prince or princess it may come within a hundred thousand. In any case it is a severe drain upon the finances of the country, not merely because of the monetary outlay, but because it disorganises everything for the time being, and through adventitious causes brings great loss to the people.

GEOMANCY It will be a sad day when Nature loses all her mystery and when we can project the cathode ray of science into every crack and cranny of this over-classified world, when we shall put, as it were, a revolver to the head of the Sibyl and compel her to rearrange the scattered leaves, when we shall reduce to grammar the leaf language of the Dordonian oak. No one seems satisfied to-day unless he has his eye at a microscope or a telescope. Wordsworth had the present age in mind when he spoke of the man who would "peep and botanise upon his mother's grave." The very children know there is no pot of gold beneath the end of the rainbow and that Santa Claus is a myth. But the Korean is as yet untouched by this passion for classification. He is as full of myth and legend, of fairy lore and goblin fancy, as any minstrel of the middle ages. Nature is full of the mysterious, and for that reason speaks to him in some sort with greater authority than she does to us.

Korean geomancy might be a page torn from some old wizard's book or copied from a Druid's scroll. It forms a distinct profession here, though no guild of geomancers exists. By some unwritten law the ranks of the profession are recruited only from the country, as no Seoul man is eligible. This is because the geomancer is occupied almost exclusively in finding