Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/174

146 There is still another class of small merchants who use no house at all, but take a stand on the street and display their wares on a piece of straw mat. This is often the method taken by the hat merchant, who has his boxes in which the hats are kept displayed on a mat in the street. Likewise the small dealer in brassware takes his stand on the street, displays his stock, and waits for his customers.

But our real village merchant does not belong to any of the above-described classes. He is a man of the road, though we could hardly call him a "knight of the grip." These are the men that travel from place to place to attend the markets. By regular established rules the market is held in the market towns every fifth day. These market towns are selected both with a view to the convenience of the merchants and the people living in the surrounding villages. If you passed through one of these market villages any day when the market was not on, you would never suspect that in a few days it would be transformed into a busy mart, with hundreds of people driving hard bargains with one another in the very streets that now appear so sleepy in their forsaken condition. The only difference that a stranger would see between a market town and any other village would be the small straw-thatched booths which are to be seen in and around the market place. In some of these booths will be noticed a stone furnace which is to hold the rice pot, and these will be noted as places where food and native rice wine are sold; in other words, a restaurant and a saloon combined.