The people of Korea look a little like Chinamen.  They have yellow skin and slanting eyes.  Their hair is long, straight, and black, and they wear it in a very strange way.  The boys and girls wear their hair down their backs in braids tied with ribbons.  The men and women have their hair in little topknots that stand straight up.

[Illustration:  A Korean.]

But I must tell you about the strange hats they have.  Some of the men wear hats that go down over their shoulders.  This is the kind of hat they wear when they are in mourning, after the death of a father or mother.  Some wear hats made of straw.  These hats look like large flowerpots turned upside down.  Some have hats made of horsehair.

But the hats made of straw and the hats made of horsehair do not keep the rain out.  So they have umbrellas.  Their umbrellas are as funny as the hats.  They are made of oil paper, and have no handles.  They look like fans.  When it rains, the people open their umbrellas and tie them on top of their hats.

The boys in Korea wear loose jackets, and wide trousers which go under their stockings.  The stockings are padded with cotton, and are tied at the ankle.  The girls wear very pretty little jackets, sometimes red, sometimes pink, and sometimes green.

The shoes they wear in Korea are of many kinds and shapes.  Some are made of leather.  Others are like the wooden shoes the Chinamen wear, which turn up at the toes.  The funniest shoes they have are made of paper.  The paper is very thick and strong, and so their paper shoes last a good while.  But the shoes that are worn by most of the people in Korea are made of straw.  They are like sandals, and they are worn so that the large toe is not covered.

The people in Korea have a strange way of keeping themselves cool in hot weather.  They have something like a basket made of rods of bamboo.  This basket is round and long, and open at the top and bottom.  They put their heads through this basket, and it hangs downward from their shoulders around their bodies.  Then they put their clothes over it, so that the basket is inside.  It is next to their skin.  How would you like to have such a summer dress?

The boys in Korea go to school when they are very young.  The girls do not go to school.  They stay at home to help their mothers.  But girls whose parents are rich have teachers at home to teach them reading and writing and other things.

In school, the teacher sits on a straw mat on the floor.  The boys also sit on the floor on straw mats.  They say their lessons out loud.  They write their lines from the top to the bottom of the page.  The people in China and Japan, as you know, write in the same way.  The boys of Korea learn to count on a chon-pan.  The chon-pan is much like the counting box they have in the schools in China.  It is made of little balls on a frame of wires fixed in a box.  The boys also learn by heart the wise sayings of great men.