The Koreans have been frequently spoken and written of as listless, dull, stupid, lazy, an inferior race; but I submit this has been said mainly by travellers who did not know them, or by those who were their enemies and had an object in making the world think them worthless, or by those who had contented themselves with looking merely on the surface and had not studied them with a wish to know them at their best. There is a certain excuse for these views, if one observes only the rough coolies in the ports or the idle worthless “boulevardiers” who lounge about the streets of Seoul, or live by sponging on the generosity of some relative better off than themselves. But such a class can be found almost anywhere, even among the most advanced European nations. To the writer it seems that there is a close parallel between the Irishman and the Korean. Both are happy-go-lucky, improvident, impulsive, warm-hearted, hospitable, generous. Take either in the midst of his native bogs, untutored, without incentive--he is thoughtless, careless, dirty; drinking, smoking and gambling away his time with apparently little ambition for anything better. Remove this same man, be he Irishman of Great Britain, or Irishman of the East--Korea--place him in a stimulating environment, educate him, instil the principles of Protestant Christianity, give him a chance to make a good living, and a certainty that he may keep his own earnings, and you will not find a better citizen, a more brilliant scholar, a finer Christian. Look at the men of North Ireland and tell me if this is not so? Look at the Christian Korean, self-supporting, independent, sober, faithful, industrious, eager to study. Hear the testimony of the missionaries of all denominations. Hear the testimony even of the foreign mining companies, who avow the Koreans are the best workmen of any nationality they have employed. Hear the testimony of the American planters in Hawaii, who say that the Koreans are the best workmen, the most sober, well-behaved, cleanly, domestic, peaceful and thrifty they have ever used, far superior to the Japanese, who are quarrelsome and unstable--or even the Chinese. Witness the young Koreans who have graduated from our American colleges and medical schools side by side with Americans, often carrying away the honors. Let us keep these facts in mind and remember that if Korea has been caught in the toils and has allowed her country to be usurped, she was caught napping. The whole nation was still in the bogs, and twenty-five years behind the rest of the world, in a time when a thousand years is as one day and one day as a thousand years. When China, the Titan, found herself helpless in the hands of the new régime, what could be expected of little Korea when she suddenly awoke to find herself shut in a trap with a foreign army in her capital and foreign guns at her palace gates?