_so_ meaning “hot.” The Japanese deliberately took a knife and cut the pill in two and handing half to Sim said, “You eat half and I will eat half.” Its immediate effects were stimulating and pleasant but in the end it proved a deadly poison for it slowly dried up the blood. Each day Sim shared one with his captor but upon retiring to his room swallowed a potion which entirely neutralized the effect of the poison. Before long Hideyoshi’s hands began to grow hard and dry and one day when he happened to cut his hand he was astonished to find that no blood followed. He called for a moxa and applied it to his hand and yet no blood came. Then he laughed aloud and cried, “I am a dead man. When I cease to breathe take out my bowels and sew my body up again with horse-hair; and then preserve my body in wine and do not let the outsiders know that I am dead.” He wanted to have the fact concealed for he feared it would have a dispiriting effect upon the troops in Korea. Shortly after this he died and his orders were minutely carried out. For two months no one outside the palace knew of his decease, but at last the stench became so great that they confessed that the great Hideyoshi had passed away. Such is the Korean story. The Koreans sum up his character as follows: He was a crafty and cunning man, and by his talk, now sharp, now suave, now sarcastic, now bullying, he managed to sway the minds of all who came near him. He managed all his generals like puppets. He liked to take boys and girls under his patronage and see them grow up together and marry them to each other and thus have them completely under his control. His two most powerful generals were Whi Wŭn and Ka Kang. They hated him and would have been glad of an opportunity to overthrow him, but it was out of the question. He knew them well, and for fear they might combine against him he made one of them governor of the east and the other of the west and ordered them to keep watch of each other. By thus pitting them against each other he made himself safe. He loved intrigue and diplomacy and had a most restless temperament. He was ever on the lookout for some kind of excitement. Gen. Ka Kang was with him when he died, and, fearing lest rebellion should break out, he filled the body with salt and so preserved it. He made a wooden form which would hold the body stiff in a sitting position and placing it in a place where the light was not very bright with the eyes wide open, the people saw him sitting there day after day and supposed of course he was alive. It was in the eighth moon when the odor was so strong that the truth could no longer be concealed. Thereupon Gen. Ka Kang took the son of Hideyoshi and made him Shogun. He then threw into prison the wives and children of Generals Kato and Konishi and sent a messenger ordering them to collect all their troops and return immediately to Japan. The order was obeyed willingly and all