Women, somehow or other, are scarce in Corea, and always in great demand.  The coolies, and people of a similar or lower standing, cannot do without a female companion, for it is she who prepares the food, washes the clothes, and sews them up.  She is beaten constantly, and very often she beats the man, for the Corean woman can have a temper at times.  Jealousy en plus is one of her chief virtues.  I have seen women in Seoul nearly tearing one another to pieces, and, O Lord! how masterly they are in the art of scratching.  The men on such occasions stand round them, encouraging them to fight, the husbands enjoying the fun more than the other less interested spectators.  The women of the lower classes seem to be in a constant state of excitement and anger.  They are always insulting one another, calling each other names, or scolding and even ill-treating their own children.  What is more extraordinary still to European ears, is that I once actually saw a wife stand up for her husband, and she did it in a way that I am not likely soon to forget.

A soldier was peacefully walking along a narrow street, half of which was a sort of drain canal, the water of which was frozen over, when a man came out of a house and stopped him.  The conversation became hot at once, and with my usual curiosity, the only virtue I have ever possessed, I stopped to see the result.

“You must pay me back the money I lent you,” said the civilian in a very angry tone of voice.

“I have not got it,” answered the military man, trying to get away.

“Ah! you have not got it?” screamed a third personage, a woman emerging from the doorway, and without further notice hit the soldier on the head with the heavy wooden mallet commonly used for beating clothes.

The husband, encouraged by this unexpected reinforcement, boldly attacked the soldier, and, whilst they were occupied in wrestling and trying to knock each other down, the infuriated woman kept up a constant administration of blows, half at least of which, in her aimless hurry, were received by the companion of her life for whom she was fighting.  Once she hit the poor man so hard—­by mistake—­that he fell down in a dead faint, upon which the soldier ran for his life, while she, jumping like a tiger at him, caught him by the throat, spinned him round like a top, and floored him, knocking him down on the ice.  Then she pounced on him, with her eyes out of her head with anger, and giving way to her towering passion, pounded him on the head with her heels while she was hitting him on the back with her mallet.

“You have killed my husband, too, you scoundrel!” she cried, while the defeated warrior was struggling hard, though in vain, to escape.