Ki Pak, Yung Pak's father, was one of the king's officials. On this
account his home was near the great palace of the king, in the city of
Seoul, the capital of the country.

This city did not look much like the ones in which you live. There were
no wide streets, no high buildings, no street-cars. Instead, there were
narrow, dirty lanes and open gutters. Shopkeepers not only occupied both
sides of the crowded streets, but half their wares were exposed in and
over the dirty gutters. Grain merchants and vegetable dealers jostled
each other in the streets themselves. In and about among them played the
boys of the city, not even half-clothed in most cases. There were no
parks and playgrounds for them such as you have. Often, too, boys would
be seen cantering through the streets, seated sidewise on the bare backs
of ponies, caring nothing for passers-by, ponies, or each
other--laughing, chatting, eating chestnuts. Other boys would be
carrying on their heads small round tables covered with dishes of rice,
pork, cabbage, wine, and other things.

[Illustration: A STREET IN SEOUL]

Around the city was a great wall of stone fourteen miles in length. In
some places it clung to the edges of the mountains, and then dropped
into a deep ravine, again to climb a still higher mountain, perhaps. In
one direction it enclosed a forest, in another a barren plain. Great
blocks were the stones, that had been in place many, many years. It must
have taken hundreds and thousands of men to put them in position, and,
though the wall was hundreds of years old, it was still well preserved.
It was from twenty-five to forty feet high. The wall was hung from one
end of the city to the other with ivy, which looked as if it had been