I well remember how, one day, through my incautiousness, I very nearly made the end of a St. Sebastian.  It was near the drilling-ground at the East Gate.  I was quietly walking along the earthern dyke which runs along the little river that crosses Seoul, when from down below I heard screams of “Chucomita!  Chucomita!” ("Wait! wait!”) “Kidare!” ("Stop!”) I stopped, accordingly, and tried to look across the open ground, where I saw about a score of men, nearly two hundred yards away, apparently pointing at me.  As the setting sun was glaring in my eyes, I could not well discern what they were doing, and, thinking that their shouts to me were only by way of joke, I made a step forward, but hardly had I done so when a noise like a rocket going past was heard, and a bunch of arrows became deeply planted in the earth, at a white circular spot marked on it, only about two yards in front of me.  I counted them.  They were ten in number.  My danger, however, was, after all, practically of no account, for these archers, as I found out by repeated observation of them, hardly ever miss their target.  Still, even in the case of these Cho-senese William Tells, it was by no means a pleasant sensation to hear that bunch of arrows whistling in front of my nose.

As I was attentively listening to the information supplied me by the native gentleman who was accompanying me through the labyrinthian ways of the royal palace, young Prince Min appeared on the scene, and announced that His Majesty wished, through him, to welcome me to the royal palace, and that he wished me now to partake of dinner.  First, however, he said, the King would be pleased if I would take a sketch from a particular spot to which he led me.  As there was nothing specially worth sketching at that place, I suggested to the young prince that another spot would be preferable; but the latter insisted, in the King’s name, that I should paint from there and left me.  I noticed, however, that there was, just behind this spot, a window, that namely, of the queen’s apartments, which led me at once to fancy that it was to satisfy her curiosity that I was made to work there; accordingly I began the sketch with my back to the window—­for, it must be remembered, to look at the queen is an offence punishable by death.  I had not been many minutes at work, nevertheless, before I heard the sliding window gently move.  I knew what was coming, and tried to screen the sketch with my body, so as to compel the observer, whoever it was, to lean well out of the window if he wished to see it.  A little way off were hundreds of soldiers, walking or squatting on the ground, and on the wall of the King’s house and smaller trees the fat and repulsive eunuchs had perched themselves in order to watch the foreigner’s doings.  All of a sudden there was a piercing squeak and a quick change of scene.  Every one standing fell flat on his chest, the soldiers to a man hid their faces in their hands on the ground, and the clumsy eunuchs dropped down pell-mell from their perches, like over-ripe fruit coming off the branch of a tree, and disappeared behind the wall.  Then, for a moment, all was silence; then there followed another shriek.  It was evidently a command to stand still until further notice.  When I looked for my Corean companion I found that he, like the rest, was spread out with his face to the ground.