The evening before, on Tuesday, April 9th, a committee of students from the missionary theological school had requested an interview with me on the following day; and the morning hour of eight o’clock had been appointed. At the time set they arrived—three in number—and the interview was held in Dr. Noble’s study or “work-shop.” My visitors began, Korean fashion, far off from their final goal, and meandered around it rather than toward it, like poachers feeling their way in the dark. An awkward pause was finally broken by my exhorting them to speak plainly and freely; at which they replied that their country’s condition was much misunderstood and that it was hoped that I would understand and sympathize with them. Of my desire to do this I at once assured them; but when the request seemed to be taking a more political turn, I replied that my interests, influence, and work, were all directed along the lines of morals, education, and religion. As a teacher, it was only as my teaching could get a hearing and have an influence on life, that my stay in Korea could benefit the Koreans themselves. At the same time, I could assure them of my confidence in Marquis Ito’s intention to administer his office in the interests of their countrymen. During all this conversation there was the appearance, in general characteristic of all similar interviews between natives and foreigners, of a mixture of suspicion and duplicity which is well calculated to betray the unwary into serious mistakes. Certainly, the real motive for their coming was being kept back; the suppressed undercurrent of feeling that could be detected was such as by no means to encourage the confidence that the feeling of race-hatred had been thoroughly purged away from these theological students by the meeting for prayer and confession of the night before. But just as I was obliged to excuse myself in order to keep another engagement the true cause of their request for an interview suddenly sprang into the light. All the night before, they said, the Korean city of Pyeng-yang had been in a state of the most intense excitement over the report from Seoul that their Emperor was going to be deposed by the Japanese! There was just then only time for me to learn from my Japanese companion that he had not the slightest suspicion of how the report, even, could have originated, and to send word to this committee of interviewers that neither he nor I gave the slightest credence to so absurd a rumor.