Dr. Allen, to whom I owe this fact writes, “Doubtless they are so considered by many a lonely wife, as well as by the fathers who mourn to see their sons wasting their substance in riotous living, as they doubtless did themselves when they were young.” The house in which I had quarters was much resorted to by merchants for whom my host transacted brokerage business, and entertainments were the order of the day. Mr. Yi was invited to dinner daily, and on the last evening entertained all who had invited him. Such meals cost per head as much as a dinner at the St. James’s restaurant! Noise seems essential to these gatherings. The men shout at the top of their voices. There is an enormous amount of visiting and entertaining among men in the cities. Some public men keep open house, giving their servants as much as $60 a day for the entertainment of guests. Men who are in easy circumstances go continually from one house to another to kill time. They never talk politics, it is too dangerous, but retail the latest gossip of the court or city and the witticisms attributed to great men, and tell, hear, and invent news. The front rooms of houses in which the men live are open freely to all comers. In some circles, though it is said to a far less extent than formerly, men meet and talk over what we should call “questions of literary criticism,” compare poetic compositions, the ability to compose a page of poetry being the grand result of Korean education, and discuss the meaning of celebrated works--all literature being in Chinese. The common people meet in the streets, the house fronts, and the inns. They ask each other endless questions, of a nature that we should think most impertinent, regarding each other’s business, work, and money transactions, and for the latest news. It is every man’s business to hear or create all the news he can. What he hears he embellishes by lies and exaggerations. Korea is the country of wild rumors. What a Korean knows, or rather hears, he tells. According to Père Dallet, he does not know the meaning of reserve, though he is utterly devoid of frankness. Men live in company in each others’ houses. Domestic life is unknown. The women in the inner rooms receive female visitors, and the girl children are present. The boys at a very early age are removed to the men’s apartments, where they learn from the conversation they hear that every man who respects himself must regard women with contempt.