There are, however, yet more notable changes and improvements than those already accomplished, which seem destined surely and speedily to follow. A water-supply, for which the surveys and contracts have already been completed and for which, during our visit, the pipes were beginning to be laid, will not only diminish the dangers that lurk in the cans of the professional water-carriers and in the private wells, but will assist the summer rains in their formidable task of washing clean the open sewers. More of these foul, winding alleys, and huddles of hovels, will be abolished. The increase in the interests of life, and the enjoyment of the rewards of protected industry, will diminish the drunkenness and gluttony, varied by enforced periods of starvation, which now distress the people. The new hospital and medical school—the former of which will immediately relieve much suffering and the latter of which will perform the yet more important service of educating a native medical class—are among the most cherished projects of the Resident-General. And when to these more essential matters there is added the cultivation of the native love of nature and taste for flowers, it is not an extravagant hope to picture Seoul as becoming, in many respects, a not undesirable place for residence, before many years are past. Even now, with the spring covering of bloom from plum, apricot, apple, and cherry, and with the profusion of flowering shrubs which adorns the valleys and the mountain-sides, one feels inclined to overlook, at least for the months of April and May, the foul sights of the gutters and the surrounding hovels. But all this was, as it were, only background and theatre for the work I wished to do and the observations I wished to make. CHAPTER III LIFE IN SEOUL