As I stood there, I could not help laughing at the sight of the crowds of men and women with swollen cheeks, bandaged up in cotton wool and kerchiefs, apparently undergoing excruciating agonies through coming out on so cold a day. One after the other they came up, first paying their chin-chins in front of the altar, and then depositing on it what _cash_ they could afford; after which they proceeded to rub one cheek after the other on the Tooth-stone, just as "puss" rubs herself against your legs when you stroke her head. The bandages had, of course, to be removed before the balloon-like cheek could be rubbed on the frozen stone, and to watch the different expressions of relief or increased pain upon their ill-balanced, inflamed faces, gave me as much amusement as any show that I have ever witnessed. Should the pain have temporarily disappeared, the man in charge of the _miracle_ would make it his duty to try and extract more money from the person cured; if, instead of that, the pain had increased, which was generally the case, then, again, he would impress on the agonised sufferer that had he paid a larger sum in the beginning the gods would not have been vexed at his meanness and the pain would have disappeared. Let him, therefore, now pay more _cash_ by way of making up for it, and try again! It is wonderful, too, how shallow people are when they have a pain anywhere! CHAPTER XV Police--Detectives--The plank-walk--The square board--The wooden blocks for hands and feet--Floggings--The bamboo rod--The stick--The flexible board--A flogging in Seoul--One hundred strokes for three-halfpence --Wounds produced--Tender-hearted soldiers--Imprisonment--Exile--Status of women, children and bachelors--Guilds and the law--Nobles and the law--Serfdom--A mild form of slavery. Should you happen to be one of the tender-hearted sort, please pass this chapter and the next over, and I shall not bear you any malice. My present object is to describe some of the punishments inflicted on criminals, and, though they are, as a whole, quaint and original, I cannot say that they are pleasing, either to see or to read about.