If some little respect be accorded to women of the middle classes, those of a lower status are held in contempt. Of the occupations open to women of the middle classes, there are two in which women of humble origin cannot engage. They are ineligible for any position in the palace: they may not manufacture tobacco-pouches. They may become sorceresses, jugglers, tumblers, contortionists, dancing-girls and courtesans. There is this wide distinction between the members of the two oldest professions which the world has ever known: the dancing-girl usually closes her career by becoming the concubine of some wealthy noble; the courtesan does not close her career at all. [Illustration: SHE MAY VISIT HER FRIENDS] It is impossible not to admire the activity and energy of the Korean woman. Despite the contempt with which she is treated, she is the great economic factor in the household and in the life of the nation. Force of circumstance has made her the beast of burden. She works that her superior lord and master may dwell in idleness, comparative luxury, and peace. In spite of the depressing and baneful effects of this absurd dogma of inferiority, and in contradiction of centuries of theory and philosophy, her diligent integrity is more evident in the national life than her husband’s industry. She is exceptionally active, vigorous in character, resourceful in emergency, superstitious, persevering, indomitable, courageous, and devoted. Among the middle and lower classes she is the tailor and the laundress of the nation. She does the work of a man in the household and of a beast in the fields; she cooks and sews; she washes and irons; she organises and carries on a business, or tills and cultivates a farm. In the face of every adversity, and in those times of trial and distress, in which her liege and lazy lord utterly and hopelessly collapses, it is she who holds the wretched, ramshackle home together. Under the previous dynasty, the sphere of the women of Korea was less restricted. There was no law of seclusion; the sex enjoyed greater public freedom. In its closing decades, however, the tone of society lowered, and women became the special objects of violence. Buddhist priests were guilty of widespread debauchery; conjugal infidelity was a pastime; rape became the fashion. The present dynasty endeavoured to check these evils by ordaining and promoting the isolation and greater subjection of the sex. Vice and immorality had been so long and so promiscuously practised, however, that already men had begun to keep their women in seclusion of their own accord. If they respected them to some extent, they were wholly doubtful of one another. Distrust and suspicion were thus the pre-eminent causes of this immuring of the women, the system developing of itself, as the male Koreans learnt to dread the evil propensities of their own sex. It is possible that the women find, in that protection which is now accorded them, some little