this purpose, I was politely requested by the Korean _aide-de-camp_ to be seated again. The Resident-General and some of his suite went to the audience-room some minutes before I was summoned to follow. It was my conjecture, from what His Majesty subsequently said, that he was being told something about me and about the work which I was to attempt in Korea. In a still later interview with Marquis Ito I learned the truth of this conjecture. The Emperor had been assured that the visitor’s purposes were not political; but the Resident-General, believing that his lectures on matters educational and ethical had been of service in Japan, had invited him to come to Korea to assist in contributing to the same important interests here. On being invited to do so by the Court interpreter, I followed him to the audience-room. Any expectation of being conducted through stately corridors to a splendid throne-room was speedily disappointed. The audience-room was as near the waiting-room as two small rooms can well be. It was itself so small that there was difficulty in making the requisite three bows before standing face to face with His Majesty, separated only by a round table of the most ordinary sort. At his right side stood, not the Crown Prince, the son of the late Queen, but the son of Lady Om. Before I had come near enough to take it, and indeed before I had made my third bow, the Emperor held out his hand. He is in appearance a quite ordinary man, of the Korean type; and there was nothing worthy of notice about his plain Korean dress. His face wore the pleasant smile with which he is said to greet all foreigners (for, as our hostess says: “_Il est très gentil, très aimable_”); although its æsthetical effect is somewhat hindered by a bad set of teeth.