“As difficult as the roads of Thibet,” is evidently a reminiscence derived from the ancient Buddhist missionaries who came from that region. “To put on a silk dress to travel at night,” is to do a good action and not have it known. Some pithy sayings show the local gauge of sense. “He does not know silver from lead,” “He has round eyes,” “He can’t tell cheese from wheat,” He is an idiot. “Doesn’t know lu from yu.” This last refers to two Corean letters, jot and tittle. “As opposed as fire and water.” “A buckskin man,” is a man of no will or backbone. “To have a big hand,” means to be liberal. “A great blue sea,” refers to something very difficult, with no end to it and no way out of it. A man who is “not known in all the eight coasts,” is an utter stranger. A very sick person is “a man who holds disease in his arms.” “A bag of diseases,” is a chronic patient “Who can tell in seeing a crow flying whether it be male or female?” is a question referring to the impossible. The numeral 10,000 (man) plays a great part in proverbial sayings as “10,000 times certain.” Corea is a “land of 10,000 peaks.” Certain success is “10,000 chances against one.” “To die 10,000 times and not be regretted,” is to be “worthy of 10,000 deaths.” Ten thousand sorrows means great grief. A mountain is “10,000 heights of a man high.” “Ten thousand strings of cash,” is a priceless amount. Man-nin are 10,000 people—all the people in the universe. “To lose one’s hands,” is to make a fiasco. A comet is an “arrow star.” “A hundred battles make a veteran.” Almost as poetical as the Greek “anarithma gelasma” (unnumbered laughings) is this Corean description of the sea—“Ten thousand flashings of blue waves.” “To lose both at a time,” is a proverb founded on a native love-story. “When a raven flies from a pear-tree, a pear falls”—appearances are deceitful, don’t hazard a guess. “If one lifts a stone, the face reddens.” The Coreans are fond of rival feats of lifting. Heavy stones are kept for that purpose. “Results are proportionate to effort put forth.” Mosquitoes are lively and jubilantly hungry in Chō-sen, yet it does not do to fight them with heavy weapons or “seize a sabre to kill a mosquito.” A very poor man is thus described: “He eats only nine times in a month,” or “He eats only three times in ten days.” To say he is in the depths of poverty is to mention the pathetic fact that “he has extinguished his fire;” for “he looks to the four winds and finds no friend.” “The right and left are different,” is said of a hypocrite who does not speak as he thinks. When a man is not very bright he “has mist before his eyes;” or he “carries his wits under his arms;” or has “hidden his soul under his arm-pits,” or he “goes to the east and goes to the west when he is bothered.” Like Beaconsfield’s dictum—“Critics are men who have failed in literature and art,” is this Corean echo, “Good critic, bad worker.”