are made use of and displayed before you to extract from your pockets the
modest sum of a _cash_. I cannot say that I am easily impressed by such
sights, and far less horrified, for in my lifetime it has been my luck to
see so many that I have got accustomed to them; but I must confess to
being on one occasion really terrified at the sight of a Corean beggar. I
was sketching not very far from this stone miniature bridge on which we
are supposed to be still standing, when I perceived the most ghastly
object coming towards me. It looked like a human being, and it did not;
but it was. As he drew nearer, I could not help shivering. He was a
walking skeleton, minus toes and fingers. He was almost naked, except
that he had a few rags round his loins; and the skin that hardly covered
his bones was a mass of sores. His head was so deformed and his eyes so
sunken that a Peruvian mummy would have been an Adonis if compared with
him. Nose he had none--_et ça passe_--for in Seoul it is a blessing not
to have one; and where his mouth should have been there was a huge gap,
his lower jaw being altogether missing. A few locks of long hair in
patches on his skull, blown by the wind, completed a worthy frame for
this most unprepossessing head.

Oh, what a hideous sight! He hopped along a step or two at a time on his
bony legs and toeless feet, keeping his balance with a long crutch, which
he held under his arm, and he had a sort of wooden cup attached by a
string to his neck, into which people might throw their charities. "He is
a leper," a Corean, who stood by my side and had noticed the
ever-increasing expression of horror on my face, informed me.

The man, or rather the scarecrow, for he hardly had any more the
resemblance to a human being, hearing the noise of the crowd that was
round me, moved in my direction. He staggered and dragged himself till he
got quite close, then bending his trembling head forward, made the utmost