“All the other scholars have gone to their homes to spend New Year’s. Why have not you two gone also?” They answered, “Your servants having no house to go to, remained here.” “What does that mean?” said Cheng-chong. “The fowls and the dogs, oxen and horses have shelter. The birds have also a hole to build their nests in. Can it be that men have no dwelling? There should be a reason for this. Speak plainly.” One of the scholars answered: “Your servant’s affairs are so-and-so. I have come even till now without re-marriage. It is because I have neither wife, child, nor family.” The story being exactly like that which he had heard before, the king cried out, “Too bad!” Then addressing the other, he put this question: “And you, how is it that you are reduced to this condition?” He answered, “My story is almost the same.” “What do you wish? Speak!” replied the king. “The circumstances being such and such, I am at this moment without wife and without food. That is my condition.” As there was in all this nothing different from the preceding, the king, struck with compassion, bestowed upon them immediately lucrative offices. If he had not examined for himself, how could he have been able to know such unfortunate men, and procure for them so happy a position in the world? In truth, the goodness of his Majesty Cheng-chong has become celebrated. CHAPTER XXXII. OUT-DOOR LIFE.—CHARACTERS AND EMPLOYMENTS. Six public roads of the first class traverse the peninsula and centre at the capital. They are from twenty to thirty feet in width, with ditches at the side for drainage. One of these begins near the ocean, in Chulla Dō, and in general follows the shores of the Yellow Sea through three provinces to Tong-chin opposite Kang-wa Island, and enters the capital by branch roads. Another highway passes through the interior of the three provinces bordering the Yellow Sea, and enters Seoul by the southern gate. Hamel and his fellow-captives journeyed by this road. The road by which the annual embassy reaches Peking, after leaving the capital, passes through Sunto and Ping-an and Ai-chiu, crosses the Neutral Strip, and enters Manchuria for Peking by way of Mukden. This was the beaten track of the French missionaries, and the shipwrecked men from the United States and Japan, and is the military road from China. It is well described, with a good map, in Koei-Ling’s “Journal of a Mission into Corea,” which Mr. F. Scherzer has translated for us.