[Illustration: A LADY AT HOME]

We find, it is true, _pros_ and _cons_ when we come to analyse her
charms, but taking the average maid, she cannot be said to be worse in
Corea than she is in other countries. She can be pretty and she can be
ugly. When she is pretty, she is as pretty as they make them, and when
she is the other way she is as ugly as sin, if not even worse. But let us
take a good-looking one. Look at her sad little oval face, with arched
eyebrows and with jet black, almond-shaped eyes, softened by the long
eyelashes. Her nose is straight, though it might to advantage be a little
less flat, and she possesses a sweet little mouth, just showing two
pretty teeth as white as snow. There seems to be so much dignity and
repose about her movements when you first see her, that you almost take
her for a small statue. Hardly will she condescend to turn her face round
or raise it up to look at you and even less inclined does she seem to
smile, such is her modesty; once her shyness has worn off, however, she
improves wonderfully. Her face brightens, and the soft, affectionate,
distant look in her eyes is enough to mash into pulp the strongest of
mankind. She is simple and natural, and in this chiefly lies her charm.
She would not compare in beauty with a European woman, for she is neither
so tall nor so well developed, but among women of far-Eastern nationality
she, to my mind, takes the cake for actual beauty and refinement. The
Japanese women of whom one hears so much, though more artistically clad,
are not a patch on the Venuses of Cho-sen, and both in respect of
lightness of complexion and the other above-named qualities they seemed
to me to approach nearest to the standard of European feminine beauty.
Their dress, as you may have judged by my rough description, is more
quaint than graceful, and cannot be said to be at all becoming;
nevertheless, when one's eyes have got accustomed to it, I have seen
girls look quite pretty in it. I remember one in particular, a concubine