From the sovereign to the beggar, the gate, both figuratively and actually, is very prominent in the public economy and in family relationships. A great deal of etiquette is visible in the gates. At the entrance to the royal palace are, or were formerly, two huge effigies, in wood, of horses, painted red. Only high officials can pass these mute guardians. All persons riding past the palace must dismount and walk. To the houses of men of rank there are usually two, sometimes three, gates. The magistrate himself enters by the largest, his parents and nearer friends by the eastern, and servants by the west or smallest. When a visitor of equal grade calls upon an officer or noble, the host must come all the way to the great or outer gate to receive him, and do likewise on dismissing him. If he be of one degree lower rank, the host comes only to the outside of the middle gate. If of third or fourth rank, the caller is accompanied only to the space inside the middle gate. The man of fifth and sixth rank finds that etiquette has so tapered off that the lord of the mansion walks only to the piazza. In front of a magistrate’s office, at the gateway, are ranged the symbols of authority, such as spears and tridents. The gates are daily opened amid the loud cries of the underlings, and their opening and closing with a vocal or instrumental blast is a national custom, illustrated as well at the city as at the office. The porters who close them at sunset and open them at dawn execute a salvo on their trumpets, often lasting a quarter of an hour. This acoustic devastation, so distressing to foreign ears, is considered good music to the native tympanum. In sitting, the same iron tongue upon the buckle of custom holds each man to his right hole in the social strap. People of equal rank sit so that the guest faces to the east and the host to the west. In ordinary easy style, the visitor’s nose is to the south, as he sits eastward of his host. A commoner faces north. In social entertainments, after the yup, or bows with the head and hands bent together, have been made, wine is sipped or drunk three or five times, and then follows what the Coreans call music. The sumptuary laws of the kingdom are peculiar, at many points amusing to occidentals. To commit pem-ram is to violate these curious regulations. What may be worn, or sat upon, is solemnly dictated by law. Nobles sit on the kan-kio, or better kind of chairs. Below the third rank, officers rest upon a bench made of ropes. Chairs, however, are not common articles of use, nor intended to be such. At entertainments for the aged, in time of rich harvests, local feasts, archery tournaments, and on public occasions, these luxuries are oftener used. In short, the chair seems to be an article of ceremony, rather than a constant means of use or comfort.