Before passing on I must say a few words on the general effectiveness of the top-knot method. It is a great pity men do not wear their hair in this way in America. We women who favor women’s rights would soon find it a mighty handle by which to manage them, for in the hands of a discerning woman it is indeed an instrument of unlimited possibilities. Who would care to wield a scepter abroad, who could wield a top-knot at home? By one of these well-tied arrangements have I beheld a justly irate wife dragging home her drunken husband from the saloon; and firmly grasping this, I have seen more than one indignant female administering that corporal punishment which her lord and master no doubt richly deserved. The Korean wife stands and serves her husband while he eats, she works while he smokes, but when family affairs come to a certain crisis, she takes the helm (that is to say, the top-knot) in hand, and puts the ship about. At another of our stopping places on this road we found a magistrate who had been so long in the interior and who was so ignorant and illiterate that he neither knew the uses of a passport, nor could read it when presented. This was serious, indeed, for here with a rough and curious crowd to be refused the shelter of the magistracy might mean our being subjected to mob violence, and would almost certainly insure our passing the night on the road. Here we must exchange exhausted pack-ponies for fresh ones, here we must obtain money for the next stage, and food and fire for our tired coolies and ourselves. So when our helper returned with the disquieting news that the magistrate would none of us, “the captain” donned his harness, and passport in hand, strode into the presence, gesticulated, I am afraid, stamped, waved the passport in the air, flung it to the ground, and by dint of noise and vehemence succeeded in impressing the astonished little official with a sense of the dignity and importance of the Foreign Office passports in the hands of strenuous Westerners. He promptly and politely gave us rooms, money, ponies, everything we needed, in order to rid himself of us and our arguments, I suppose, and no doubt he still recalls us as the most remarkable and alarming intruders who ever disturbed his quiet and uneventful life. But although sheltered by the magisterial walls our annoyances were not over. Word had been passed far and near of the arrival of foreigners, and the crowds gathered thicker and thicker. They were only rude and good-naturedly curious, but curiosity is a strange passion when really aroused, as only those who have been its victims know. Men will travel miles, will undergo unheard-of fatigues and surmount great difficulties, and will pay very little regard to the convenience, comfort or even safety of those who try to oppose them in their desires to gratify this passion.