A good deal of the native voracity is due, however, not to this insatiable appetite and gluttony alone, but also to Corean etiquette, according to which it shows a want of respect to the host and is a mark of great rudeness not to eat all that is placed before one. If all is not eaten they argue that you do not like it and consider it to be badly cooked or inferior to what you have at home. The notion of a normal capacity is strange to them, and never even enters their mind. They are trained from childhood to eat huge quantities of food, and to take heartily all that they can get. I have seen children with thin little bellies so extended after a meal, in the course of which they had been stuffed with rice and barley, that they could hardly walk or even breathe. I recollect on one occasion remarking to a mother, who was beamingly showing me her child in a similar condition: "Are you not afraid that his skin will give way?" "Oh no! Look!" Upon which she stuffed down his little throat three or four more spoonfuls of rice. I have been thankful ever since that I was not born a Corean child. When the Coreans eat in their own houses, the men of the family take their meals first, being waited on by their wives and servants; after which the females have their repast in a separate room. The women seldom drink intoxicants, and have to be satisfied with water and rice-wash. It is the duty of the wife to look after the welfare of her husband, and when she has fed him, and he has drowsily laid himself down on the ground, or on his little mattress, as the case may be, she retires, and after having had her food either goes to see her friends or to wash her master's clothes, or else goes to sleep.