A more singular New Year custom in Seoul is “Walking the Bridges.” Up to midnight, men, women, and children cross a bridge or bridges as many times as they are years old. This is believed to prevent pains in the feet and legs during the year. This day, the “Great Fifteenth Day,” concludes the kite-flying and stone fights which enliven Seoul for the previous fortnight, and every Korean insists on keeping it as a holiday. Graves are formally visited, and gathered families spread food before the ancestral tablets. Curious customs prevail at this time. A few days before, the Palace eunuchs chant invocations, swinging burning torches as they do so. This is supposed to ensure bountiful crops for the next season. People buy quantities of nuts, which they crack, hold the kernels in the mouth, and then throw them away. This is to prevent summer sores and boils. Also on the Great Fifteenth Day men try to find out the probable rainfall for each month by splitting a small piece of bamboo, and laying twelve beans side by side in one of the halves, after which it is closed, and after being bound tightly with cord, is lowered into a well for the night. Each bean represents a month. In the morning, when they are examined in rotation, they are variously enlarged, and the enlargement indicates the proportion of rain in that special moon. If, on the contrary, one or more are wizened, it causes great alarm, as indicating complete or partial drought in one or more months. Dogs do not get their usual meal on the morning of the “Great Fifteenth,” in the belief that the deprivation will keep them from being pestered with flies during the long summer. If a boy has been born during the year, poles bearing paper fish by day and lanterns by night project from the house of the parents. The people at night watch the burning of candles. If they are entirely burned, the life of the child will be long; if only partially burned, it will be proportionately shorter. I left Seoul very regretfully on 5th February. The Japanese had introduced _jinrikshas_, but the runners were unskilled, and I met with so severe an accident in going down to Chemulpo that I did not recover for a year. The line of steamers to Japan was totally disorganized by the war, and in the week that I waited for the _Higo Maru_ war was uppermost in people’s thoughts. There were some who even then could not bring themselves to believe in the eventual success of the Japanese. The fall of Wei-hai-wei and the capture of the Chinese fleet opened many eyes. I was in the office of the “N.Y.K.” when the news came, and the clerks were too wild with excitement to attend to me, apologizing by saying, “It’s another victory!” Chemulpo was decorated, illuminated, and processioned for victories, Li Hung Chang was burned in effigy, and unlimited _sake_ for all comers was supplied from tubs at the street corners.