I looked around the little room for some means of escape, like a hunted animal. Its windows and doors were double, the inner one sliding into the wall, but both were composed simply of a light frame of slender sticks covered with stout paper, and already the dancing girls and boys were tearing away the outer coat preparatory to forcing an entrance. Suddenly I espied a small door, which I found opened into a long dark closet, full of the dust and dirt of unclean centuries. Hither I fled, cowering in its farthest recesses. Those who looked in the windows, and saw nothing of the strange animal _genus Americanum_, concluded she must be in some other place, and so a short respite was granted, which Mr. Underwood and the deputy magistrate made good use of in guarding our house doors. The deputy himself was obliged to take his station there, and threatening with awful penalties any soldier who should permit the “_chabin duli_” (roughs and crowd) to enter uninvited. Henceforth during my stay in that town I was comparatively untroubled. A very epidemic of diseases, however, seemed to have smitten the place. Every one needed the doctor, and old, almost forgotten complaints were resurrected and rubbed up, or if none existed new ones were invented to furnish an excuse for an introduction. People stood in long rows from morning till night to see this popular doctor, and had I been medicining for money, I might have charged almost any price and filled high our coffers; but I was only too glad to be able to tell them of the great Physician, whose unspeakable gift is without money or price. The magistrate treated us very kindly, and one day made a dinner for Mr. Underwood at a little summer house outside the city. Here, after partaking of various Korean dainties, he asked him a great many questions about America and Americans. My husband had thus a fine opportunity to enlighten the man on our own mission and work. He of course listened politely, but the Korean noble is very difficult to reach. He is bound so rigidly by so many social, religious and political fetters, that he usually will not allow himself to consider for a moment the possibility of casting them off. We were much disappointed at not finding here any of the inquirers of whom we had been told so much, and to examine and instruct whom Mr. Underwood had turned so far aside from the main road to his final destination, Weeju. We could only conclude that they had either been too shy to approach us in the public quarters in which we were located or that we had been entirely misinformed, and we were forced very reluctantly to accept the latter as a fact.