"I could do nothing but submit," whined the governor. "The Chinese army had possession before your army came."

"You are a coward and a traitor," growled the colonel, spurning the prisoner with his foot.

So, almost from the time of Christ, the Corean nation had crouched in fear between Japan and China, prostrating itself alternately before the rival thrones.

A traveller in Corea is bewildered by the effects of three thousand years of hermit life upon this strange people. They are not savages. Thirty centuries of civilization are set down in their literature. Nowhere else in the world have I seen such magnificent specimens of physical manhood. The ordinary European is a pygmy among the tall, straight, powerful Coreans. An indescribable gravity and dignity of manner lends itself to the impressive grace and strength and the noble features of this ancient race. As the men become old they grow long beards, which add to their naturally majestic bearing.

Yet the Coreans are the emptiest-headed, most childlike, and most generally foolish people among civilized nations. They are the grown-up children of Asia. Their ignorance is not like the ignorance of Central Africa. Hundreds of years ago, they inspired Japan with the love of art, and their literature is as old as Egypt. They are gentle and meditative. Throughout the Corean peninsula, stately quotations from the noblest Chinese odes are painted on the public buildings, in the quaint summer pagodas, and on the walls of dwelling houses. Their very battle flags are inscribed with philosophic sayings.

But the Coreans are drugged with abstract scholasticism and demonology. They are credulous almost beyond belief. A white-bearded, spectacled Solomon, who can recite whole poems from the Chinese classics, will tell you gravely that there are not more wells in Ping Yang, because the city is an island and, if too many holes were cut in the bottom, it might sink. There is a spirit for the hill, another one for the valley, another for the rice-field, another for the woods, another for the river, another for the house, and so on, endlessly. Cut off from active intercourse with other nations for thousands of years, the Coreans represent the most remote ages of mystic Oriental civilization.

The mountainous, many-templed peninsula has been swept by many wars. More than a century before the Christian era began, the native king defeated a Chinese army on the banks of the Tai-Tong River. Nearly seven hundred years afterward, the Emperor of China sent three hundred thousand soldiers to conquer Corea and failed. His successor raised a force of a million warriors, armed principally with trumpets, banners, and gongs, and was again baffled. More than two hundred thousand of the yellow host died on the soil of Corea. And yet, a generation later, China sent another army to subdue the hermit nation. Corea massed a hundred and fifty thousand lancemen, swordsmen, and archers. A great battle was fought near Ping Yang, and after twenty thousand of his men had been slain, the Corean general surrendered and the Chinese divided among themselves fifty thousand horses and ten thousand coats of mail.

War after war reddened the mountains and valleys, and still a native dynasty remained on the hermit throne of Corea, the same profound desire for isolation from the rest of the world pervaded the people.

In spite of her centuries of suffering, in spite of the invasions and rebellions, Corea remained a recluse among the nations. Her king cheerfully consented to be the vassal of China or Japan, or both at the same time. All he asked was to be let alone with his gentle, dreamy people and his soft-eyed dancing girls.

This was the attitude of the King of Corea when I talked with him at Seoul. He was grateful to the Japanese for emancipating him from the Chinese, but he hinted that some nation -- the United States, for instance -- might find it convenient to emancipate him from the emancipators. He longed for a return to the ancient national quiet -- philosophy, poetry, and solitude.

Not having eaten of the lotus flower, I felt criminally modern in this venerable country. The solemn old men, with their big spectacles, flowing beards, umbrella-like hats, yard-long pipes, and calm faces, pacing majestically along the narrow streets or on the winding mountain paths, seemed to rebuke the news-hunting fever in my veins. What was an American newspaper -- born every morning only to die at night -- to that mild, contented people, whose civilization had survived the shocks of three thousand years? What could the telegraph, telephone, steam engine, or printing press add to their happiness?

The native crew of the junk that carried me down the Tai-Tong River from Ping Yang mutinied. I called the leader to me and let him look through my powerful field-glasses. Then I allowed him to look through the wrong end of the glasses. After that I unscrewed one of the lenses and, concentrating the rays of the sun, burnt a hole in the wooden deck.

That settled it; the crew surrendered and went to work. But not one of them dared to touch even my clothes, lest I might bewitch him.

At Chemulpo I saw a gigantic Corean porter, who could lift twelve hundred pounds on his shoulders, burst into tears when my eighteen-year-old Japanese interpreter slapped his face. He was strong enough to have killed the interpreter with a single blow; but it never seemed to occur to him to strike back.

When I reached Seoul, the picturesque capital of Corea, having slept in my riding boots all night on the deck of a little British steam launch beside Dr. Sill, the American minister, I found that the King -- alarmed by the presence of the victorious Japanese army on his soil -- had refused to receive any more visitors, withdrawing himself even from direct communication with the foreign ministers.

An interview with the King would give a quaint variety to the endless descriptions of fighting. The American public must be allowed to see the inmost throne of the royal palace; American journalism must invade the presence of the hermit monarch -- to touch whose person was an offence punishable by death -- see his face, question him, and weave his sorrows into some up-to-date political moral. The artificial majesty of kings, after all, counts for little before the levelling processes of the modern newspaper power. It may be intrusive, it may be irreverent, it may be destructive of sentiment; but it gradually breaks down the walls of tradition and prejudice that divide the human race. It introduces the king to the peasant. It makes the East known to the West in an understandable dialect. It is the subtlest, swiftest element in the chemistry of modern civilization.

There was one foreigner alone who could reach the King at that time -- the King's doctor. That man was Dr. Horace N. Allen, then Secretary of the American Legation, and now American Minister to Corea. A sovereign who lives in daily dread of poison is bound to be on intimate and friendly terms with his physician. Through Dr. Allen's intercession I secured his Majesty's consent to an interview.

We were carried in curtained sedan chairs through the swarming, crooked streets of old Seoul to one of the great gates of the palace. There we alighted, and followed a solemn chusa, clad in a blue silk robe adorned with white stocks, who trudged on before us into the royal grounds in big, ceremonial, black cloth boots.

The King's palace consists of four or five hundred rambling houses set within giant stone walls. Acres and acres of dull tiled roofs rise above tawdry dwellings daubed with red, blue, yellow, and white, with here and there fantastic gargoyles of carved wood peering out from under quaint Asiatic eaves.

There was an air of desolation over it all. The hall and lotus pond, where the King languished among his dark-eyed dancing girls, were deserted, and spiders were spinning their webs across the entrance. Water purled wantonly from a broken fountain. A shattered door, gilded and tinted, lay at the side of an empty shrine. Now and then a lazy official in an enormous hat and silken robe shambled out of a doorway, and looked at us. The sleepy, dilapidated sentries presented arms -- many of them guns without locks -- as we passed through the age-worn streets of the royal demesne. Once we caught a glimpse of a woman's face, half veiled, at a window -- probably one of the King's beautiful slaves.

Three thousand people usually live in the palace grounds, but that day it was like a deserted town but for the slouching, uneasy guards. Treachery lurked in every shadow; murder crouched in every street. Only a few months later the Queen -- she who poisoned so many of her rivals -- was assassinated in these grounds and burned to ashes.

We walked for about a quarter of a mile among the old buildings, and then we came to an open pavilion surrounded by latticed screens, where Hong Woo Kwan, the moon-faced interpreter of the American Legation, clad in a richly embroidered court dress, met us, and seated us at a small table. A moment later a smug, smiling Corean rustled in, shook hands with himself, and bowed to us. He was the King's cook, a man not to be overlooked in a monarchy whose destinies are so often controlled by poison. Champagne and cigarettes were set before us. Here we sat until the King sent word that he was ready, and the guard was turned out to salute us.

The way led through a small wooden gate guarded by seven or eight awkward soldiers, three of whom were without arms. A few steps along a crooked lane, lined with gorgeously painted little houses, brought us to another small gate, also closely guarded, and, on passing through it, we found ourselves in a curious paved courtyard, on the opposite side of which was a frontless room, raised above the ground like a stage in a theatre, with wooden steps at the side leading up to it. As we crossed the yard and ascended the steps, we could see the King surrounded by his palace officials -- remarkably like a grouping in some drama.

In another moment I was face to face with the unhappy sovereign of Corea. He stood behind a table, in front of a gaudily upholstered European chair, with his small, nervous hands crossed lightly over his ceinture, -- a slender, shy man, with an oval face, thin, silky mustache and chin beard, a kind, voluptuous mouth, and soft, dark eyes. He had the eyes of a beautiful girl. When he smiled he hung his head on one side, half closed his eyes, looked straight at us, and opened them slowly with the expression of a bashful woman. The King did not extend his hand. To touch him intentionally is death; to touch him by accident means that the offender must wear a red cord around his wrist for the rest of his life. It was once a capital crime to look at him in the streets. The King's person is divine. When he goes abroad in his city all doors must be shut and the owner of each house is compelled to kneel before his door with a broom and dustpan in his hand as emblems of humility. All the windows must be sealed lest some one should look down upon the monarch. So sacred is the person of the King, that when he moves outside of his palace two sedan chairs, exactly alike in appearance, are carried by the guards, and no one but the highest ministers knows in which chair the King sits.

The King was clad in a crimson silk robe with wide sleeves, yoked at the shoulders with cloth of gold, and caught at the waist by a gold-buckled, loose, black belt. A haze of black gauze covered the royal mantle, and a sparkling jewel held it across the breast. He wore on his small, shapely head a strange structure of stiffened black net, not unlike the semi-transparent framework of an American woman's bonnet. It rose in the form of an exaggerated Phrygian cap, and was provided with grotesque, black wings standing upright. The monarch's legs were enveloped in huge, baggy trousers of white silk, and his swathed ankles bulged out above embroidered Corean shoes. On either side stood two rat-eyed, watchful eunuchs in pale blue robes, their dark faces scowling and their hands hidden in the folds of huge sleeves.

To the right of the King the crown prince leaned against a table, a half-witted, open-mouthed youth, attired like his father, save that his mantle was purple. General Yé, the commander-in-chief of the army, stood on the left of the crown prince, velvet-eyed, green-clad, a mighty jewelled sword gleaming at his side.

The courtiers were spread out on the stage in a half circle like a many-colored fan. The ceiling of carved rafters overhead was a confused whirl of colors. The walls were latticed and panelled with translucent native paper.

Three slow bows and a pause. The twenty-eighth king of Corea was about to undergo the ordeal of a newspaper interview, an experience undreamed of by his predecessors. The interpreter folded his hands across the embroidered storks on his bosom, bent his head reverently, and advanced.

"I am glad to receive a representative of the American press," whispered the King in the ear of the bowed interpreter, who whispered the words to me without daring to move his head. "It is my wish and the wish of my people that Corea shall be absolutely free and independent. I appeal now and I shall continue to appeal to the civilized nations of the world to assist in preserving the integrity of my kingdom. I especially rely upon the United States. The American government was the first to make a treaty with Corea, and that treaty contains a promise of help in time of danger. I look to the United States for a fulfilment of that promise. My faith in your country is unshaken. When other nations threaten me, I turn to America."

"But how can the United States help you now?" I asked.

The King looked embarrassed, and his whispering grew fainter than ever. It was plain that he felt constrained in the presence of his courtiers. He hesitated, looked about him nervously, then said: --

"If a few American soldiers were sent to the palace to protect my person, it would change the situation."

While the King was speaking, I could see a pair of glittering black eyes peering through an opening in the screen. Behind the screen stood the famous Queen whose ashes were soon to be scattered over her own garden. It was this extraordinary woman, who, when disguised and flying for safety in 1884, unveiled her bosom to deceive her foes, crying, "See! would the Queen of Corea do that? Would she not die first?" All through the interview the Queen watched us from her place of concealment. She never allowed her royal husband out of her sight in those days of peril, fearing that the dread Tai Won Kung -- the former regent -- intended to destroy the King and put his grandson, General Yé, on the throne.

As I retired from the presence of the King, General Yé came forward leaning on the shoulders of his jewelled attendants -- a stalwart, bright-looking young man with the bearing of a European gentleman.

The interpreter gravely informed me that the general desired me to know that he had arrived, which I knew by the fact that he was standing within ten inches of me. He said that the general hoped that my health was very good. Then he remarked that the general wished to inform me that he was going, which I suspected from the circumstance that the general had already turned his back upon me and was walking away.

Then to the Tai Won Kung, the mightiest figure in modern Corean history. We walked on through the little lane which brought us to the King, passed through a sentinelled gate, and beheld the dwelling of the real ruler of Corea, a low building with a gray-tiled roof and broad veranda, reached by terraced flights of stone steps. The old hero stood on the threshold. He shook hands with me like an American politician. In spite of his seventy-eight years, his voice was trumpet-like. His laugh was a roar, accompanied by a convulsion of his whole body.

"We are ready to open Corea to the world," he said, as he ordered tea to be set before us. "The country can no longer be kept sealed to foreigners. But this change is too sudden. Corea is a peculiar country. For thousands of years our people have clung to their usages. The customs of ages cannot be given up in a day. The surrender to Western civilization must be gradual. That is the way of old Asia."

As the laughing giant sprawled back in his chair and joked with us over the fragrant tea, it was hard to believe that, thirty years before, he had beheaded hundreds of innocent Christians to gratify his hatred of the "Western barbarians," and had ordered wholesale butcheries of his own countrymen, because they had dared to champion the cause of modern civilization.

Poor, dreaming Corea! Some day the American syndicates will get hold of her, and her crimes against common sense will be expiated.

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