Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/272

232 which must be a part of every true home. This chapter could be filled with instances which prove the absence of the true spirit of home.

The family does not eat together. The men have their meals served to them in the best rooms, while the women usually eat theirs in the cook shed, which has nothing but the ground for a floor. Christianity is changing this so that Christian families now take their meals together, always asking a blessing before eating, and often reading a portion of Scripture. One good man told me that at their meals they had read the New Testament through twice and were half through again. Think of it — they are so thankful for what the Bible has brought to them that each day before eating their rice (and it is rice) they take time to learn more of the blessed Word! Another woman said she lived with her husband many years before she ever ate a meal with him, but since they had both become Christians they now have their meals together. Sometimes when I have been tallying to men about the duty of loving their wives, some one would speak up and say: "How could a man live with his wife if he did not whip her?"

I saw a man leading his wife through the streets and beating her; and when she threw herself upon the ground, refusing to go farther, he stamped her in the chest and kicked her till I feared he would kill her on the spot. All this, too, in the presence of a policeman in full uniform, who made no effort to protect the woman. I remonstrated with the man till he stopped beating her, but he forced her on through the street, to what fate I know not.