Three days later, in the stillness of the Korean New Year’s Day, I rode with a friend along a lonely road passing through a fair agricultural valley among pine-clothed knolls outside the South and East Gates of Seoul. Snow lay on the ground and the grim sky threatened a further storm. It was cold, and we observed with surprise three coolies in summer cotton clothing lying by the roadside asleep; but it was the last sleep, for on approaching them we found that, though their attitudes were those of easy repose, the bodies were without heads, nor had the headsman’s axe been merciful or sharp. In the middle of the road were great, frozen, crimson splashes where the Tong-hak leaders had expiated their treason, criminals in Korea, as in old Jerusalem, suffering “without the gate.” A few days later an order appeared in the _Gazette_ abolishing beheading and “slicing to death,” and substituting death by strangulation for civil, and by shooting for military capital crimes. This order practically made an end of the prerogative of life and death heretofore possessed by the Korean sovereigns. So the “old order” was daily changing under the pressure of the Japanese advisers, and on the whole changing most decidedly for the better, though, owing to the number of reforms decreed and in contemplation, everything was in a tentative and chaotic state. Korea was “swithering” between China and Japan, afraid to go in heartily for the reforms initiated by Japan lest China should regain position and be “down” upon her, and afraid to oppose them actively lest Japan should be permanently successful. On that same New Year’s Day there was more to be seen than headless trunks. Through the length of Seoul, towards twilight, an odor of burning hair overpowered the aromatic scent of the pine brush, and all down every street, outside every door, there were red glimmers of light. It is the custom in every family on that day to carry out the carefully preserved clippings and combings of the family hair and burn them in potsherds, a practice which it is hoped will prevent the entrance of certain dæmons into the house during the year. Rude straw dolls stuffed with a few _cash_ were also thrown into the street. This effigy is believed to take away troubles and foist them on whoever picks it up. To prevent such a vicarious calamity, more than one mother on that evening pounced upon a child who childlike had picked up the doll and threw it far from him. On that night round pieces of red or white paper placed in cleft sticks are put upon the roofs of houses, and those persons who have been warned by the sorcerers of troubles to come, pray (?) to the moon to remove them. A common Korean custom on the same day is for people to paint images on paper, and to write against them their troubles of body or mind, afterwards giving the paper to a boy who burns it.