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a Corean, not a Japanese, institution. But compulsive necessity brought many and many a maimed peasant to its clean beds and well-ventilated wards. who, lying there helpless, had much time and much food for reflection. At first they wondered what special form of witchcraft was here at work on them. But gradually they appreciated the fact that the witches, in snowwhite uniforms and with kindly faces, were gentler in their methods, certainly eased their pain more rapidly, than those to which they had been so long accustomed. They did unpleasant things sometimes against which they were too feeble to rebel, but it was often to the accompaniment of pleasanter dreams than they had ever had before, which they seemed capable of evoking at will; and then the clean beds were pleasant to lie upon and induced restful sleep at nights. And when the time for leaving came, all the wonders which the new medicinemen had wrought were recounted to the family; so the poorest homes became centres whence the Ito legend spread, and the witch-power in the land was being gradually, slowly, it is true, but surely undermined. However slow the process of regeneration, so that it was effective, Ito never neglected any means of bringing it about, even though he knew that it wanted more than all that remained to him of his own life to compass it entirely.

And the Royal House, too, fell under the potency of the legend. Great dismay was caused in the breasts of the old Emperor and the Lady Om, when the idea was broached that the little Crown Prince should go to Japan to be educated: consternation when it was carried out, much fostered by the allwise critic. Some said one thingthat he was to be held as a hostage for Corean good behaviour-and some said another: why Japanese education-the Prince ought undoubtedly to have been

sent to England! And his mother, the Lady Om, being in sore perplexity, called her familiar soothsayer, and, lining his purse with gold, bid him go to his mountain, consult the spirits and the stars, and report whether this thing should bring good or evil to her son. So the man retired to the mountain, and pondered what it were best for him to say; for he was wise enough to see among the signs of the times one which specially affected him: that the days of his witchcraft were nearly numbered, and that he had better add to his hoard without delay. So, the question being a delicate one, more time was necessary before the stars could give their answer: also more gold. Alas for the uncertainty of human calculations, a cable from the Crown Prince to his mother, telling her how much he was enjoying himself in Tokyo, and how gracious his reception had been by the members of the Imperial family of Japan, and sending an affectionate message to his own family, destroyed the power of the evil sayer of smooth things for ever. He now lives in peaceful but opulent retirement.

I must note one further recollection of those pleasant days in Seoul, which showed how consistent Prince Ito was in working out his personal policy of reconciliation. A wealthy citizen of the United States had devoted a considerable sum to the foundation of quarters in Seoul for the Young Men's Christian Association, but a large sum was still wanted for endowment. The principal tenet of that admirable body, undenominational "Honour the King," appealed to the Resident-General. He realized that if it should get a hold on the minds of any considerable body of the rising generation of Coreans, it would be a powerful assistant in his policy of working to the general through the individual. He therefore gave the Association his personal

an

support, and persuaded the Corean Government to contribute largely to the endowment fund. But he made it very plain that the King he desired young Corea to honor was their own hereditary Sovereign.

The opening ceremony lives in my memory as it must in the minds of all who witnessed it. It was a brilliantly sunny afternoon, and all Seoul, seeing much bunting, turned out to see the show. The Corean loves shows; processions appeal greatly to his mind, chiefly because they mean at least two hours' rest from thoughts of labor, with loitering in the streets instead. But this show was to be somewhat remarkable, even for the dwellers in Seoul, for it had been bruited abroad that something out of the common was to be done, as indeed the display of bunting testified. Prince Ito had devised a little object-lesson for them. The idea had been conceived-I think the Prince had a good deal to do with it that two corner-stones should be laid, instead of the usual foundationstone, one by the Crown Prince, the other by himself. The dedication ceremony was much the same as it would have been in Europe, with hymns and prayers appropriate to the occasion, and speeches, of gift and acceptance, in which that duty of honoring the King was largely emphasized. In witness whereof, when both stones were well and truly laid, the little Crown Prince, in smart khaki uniform, stood by the veteran Resident-General (he was, in the family vernacular of the East, "Uncle" Ito even then to the boy), saluting the Corean national anthem. Around them white-clad Coreans, young and old, Bishop Turner in full canonicals, his clergy in surplices, and the frock-coated consular body, with the pennons of the guard of Japanese lancers fluttering in the breeze: as strange a concourse of people as the medley of music which the Imperial

Corean band performed. After the Corean came the Japanese national anthem, and after that again the "Hallelujah Chorus."

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I do not think that the object-lesson failed in reaching some of the Corean crowd. Prince Ito was anxious to wean the Crown Prince from the fatal influence of the hangers-on of the Palace, and also, although he was barely twelve years old, that he should take his part in all public functions. occasion of the Y. M. C. A. ceremony was an eminently appropriate one for him to take a leading part; and these two figures standing in the foreground of the picture personified to the Coreans their country under the friendly protection and guidance of the Japanese nation.

There was an element of the dramatic in Ito's nature, and to many critics but not too close observers of his methods, he seemed to have an inordinate love of display, an almost childish weakness for the decorations which the Sovereigns of all nations conferred upon him. Yet his outlook on the decorative side of his high position was eminently sane. In that position he took the keenest delight, knowing that he had triumphantly achieved it.

And he looked upon decorations as if they really were orders of chivalry, the bestowal of them by foreign Sovereigns a token of their admiration of such an achievement. I remember him at a lunch given by the Italian Consul-General at Seoul in honor of the birthday of Queen Margharita. In proposing her health Ito made a charming little speech in English, displaying a perfect knowledge of the great human qualities which distinguished Her Majesty, recalling the days he had spent in Italy, and the cordial welcome he had received from the King and Queen. There was no trace of those baser elements which sometimes disfigure such speeches; he spoke of Sover

eigns as he had won the right to speak of them, and in this case he rendered to the woman the homage of a gallant gentleman.

In the same spirit it delighted him to tell how the gift of their noblest orders had made him "cousin" to three Kings. But he was ever true to England, his early love. It pleased him to make my visit the occasion of a banquet at which all the Corean Ministers and Japanese officers of State were present. He spoke, for him at considerable length, in those same detached sentences, each preceded by its little spell of thought. By a curious coincidence the date was the twentieth anniversary of the day on which I had sailed for Japan, and he referred in more than friendly terms to the very humble part I had played in the making of the constitution. He sketched briefly the story of his early life, and the causes which led him to England; dwelt on the fascination which English constitutional doctrine had for him, and the necessity, which he had deemed vital, of introducing some of its principles into the constitution of his own country. But what he most desired to declare to a younger generation of Japanese, as well as to the Corean Ministers, was his admiration and unalterable affection for England, which had always been since his first welcome, and still was for him, his second country.

The position which Prince Ito held as a prophet full of honor among his own people was, I think, far removed from popularity-indeed he could hardly be described as popular. Nor would anyone have dreamt of applying to him such an epithet as "hero" or "empire-builder." His hold on the imagination of the people drew its strength from deep sources, for which the current banalities of these late years can find no word; for the men

who have been in like position are only to be numbered with the centuries. It is no party that mourns his untimely death; nor is it right even to say that all parties have laid aside their quarrels, as parties sometimes do in the presence of the Great Dead. The nation mourns, not as it would mourn a victorious soldier, but for the man in whom were united all those things which go to make the national character. Ito was Japan incarnate: in his persistent striving to attain the ideal which the men of his country in the ages past have created: in his observance of those knightly traditions which the generations of to-day obey: in meeting obstacles face to face, in that fearless plucking of the nettles of danger which turns them into means of safety: and, above all, in his loyal devotion to the throne, he rendered unconscious obedience to the law which has made these things instinctive to the nation, and has set the footsteps of its children on the perfect way.

He often thought of retiring to his home at Oiso; but he knew that he could not do so until his work was done, and, unless his Emperor released him, that he would die in harness. He perfectly realized, though it was not in his nature to talk of it, that his death might be a violent one, for he knew that his policy had not yet touched the traditional hatred which the advanced section of the Coreans perpetuate, and which to-day flames up into murder. The creeds of the East make it an article of faith that the good men do lives after them, and that their thoughts do not perish. In that faith he acted. To one who knew him as Chief and friend, the Ito legend is a great reality, standing outside policies. In the time to come, if his dream comes true of the two nations living as allies at peace, farmers who till their fertile soil, prosperous artisans, men and women whom the

doctors have healed, talking of the time when there was great strife and bitterness between their country and Japan, will tell their children of a great spirit of reconciliation which spread through the land, sowing the seeds of peace and happiness wherever it went. Through tribulation, nations, like men, sometimes come to great prosperity. If I am right in thinking The Nineteenth Century and After.

that there are very many Coreans whom that spirit has touched. who mourn with Japan as for a friend, looking on his death as a common loss, then the murderer of Kharbin will have invested the Ito legend with such renewed vitality that the Prince himself would not have wished it otherwise.

F. T. Piggott.

A PAUPERS' RESTAURANT AND HOME.

"I am better off now than I ever was in my life before," an old man, with keen eyes and a much bewrinkled little face, informed me cheerily, in his broad Vienna dialect, the first time I was at Lainz.

"Ja, es geht uns ganz gut hier," another old fellow remarked, and there was not a man in the room but repeated his words, “Ja, ja, es geht uns ganz gut."

"Is your food to your liking?" I inquired; and again there was a chorus of "Ja, ja," accompanied this time by much chuckling; for it would be odd, as they told me, were it not to their liking, seeing that they had the choosing of it themselves.

A more contented little company 1 have never seen, nor a little company on better terms with themselves and the world at large. They welcomed me in the most friendly fashion, as hosts welcoming a guest; and when they heard that I had come all the way from England to see what their new home was like, they beamed with delight. For they are, as I soon discovered, immensely proud of this new home of theirs: there is not such another home in all Europe they are firmly convinced; not so beautiful a home, not a home in which the indwellers are so well cared for; and, above all, not a home in which they are so

well fed. One of them drew my attention to the comfortable chairs they have to sit on; another to the warm, well-fitting clothes they were wearing: "Were we burghers we could not be better dressed"; while they all seemed anxious I should note how well the room was heated, and what a beautiful view they had from their windows. "That is our Emperor's Thiergarten," they told me proudly, pointing to the great park that lies just beyond their own garden. "The Emperor is a near neighbor of ours, you see."

These old men were not only well clothed, but spick and span: their hair was well brushed, their collars were clean, and not a button was missing anywhere. Sitting there in their pretty green and white room, with its great balcony which catches every sun-ray, they might have been barons, so far as appearances went, if only they could have kept their poor battered old hands out of sight. Not but that most of them had on their faces those lines that tell of moiling and toiling and burdenbearing; just here and there among them, indeed, was a man with the look in his eyes that a close tussle with starvation leaves behind. For, notwithstanding their dignified appearance, notwithstanding, too, their cheerfulness and genial good manners, they were only poor old paupers, although

all Vienna would rise up in wrath were it to hear the word "pauper" applied to its old people at Lainz. These old people, by the way, cost the town only 18. 5d, a day each, or 7d. a day less than our old workhouse inmates in London cost us. Yet both food and clothing are, if anything, dearer in Vienna than here.

Lainz is the old-age home the city of Vienna has built on land presented to it for the purpose by the Emperor Franz Josef. There nearly 3400 of its worn-out workers are not only well housed, well fed, well clothed, and well tended, but they are, so far as in them lies, made happy. It is a huge place; still there is nothing oppressive about its size; for it consists, not of one building, but of a series of buildings, detached pavilions, each one of which is a separate home, its inmates forming a separate community. There are homes for old men and homes for old women and homes for old married couples. There are homes for the sorely afflicted, too, for the very feeble, for those who are just waiting for the end to come; and there will soon be a hospital quite near at hand for those who need special treatment. There are no homes, however, it must be noted, for the drunken, the vicious, or the degraded; for Lainz was built as a refuge solely for respectable old folk; and if by mischance folk who are not respectable are admitted, they must conceal the fact that they are not on a par morally with those around them, and demean themselves as if they were. Otherwise they are speedily transferred to Mauerbach, the old-age home that is specially reserved for the less worthy of the town's protégés, its goats as apart from its sheep. All Viennese, it must be remembered, who being above sixty years of age and in poverty, are too feeble to live alone, and have no relatives with whom they can live,

have the right to claim admission to an old-age home.

In addition to the pavilions in which the old people live there are other pavilions, of course; one in which the administration is carried on; another in which the nursing sisters live; another that serves as a laundry; another, again and this the most interesting of all-that serves as a kitchen and restaurant combined. The pavilions are ranged on either side of a beautiful church on which money and thought have been lavished without stint. So gorgeous is it, indeed, with its purple and gold and dazzling white, its richly stained windows, embroidery and delicate tracery, that one would be inclined to look on it askance were it not that everything about it that smacks of luxury was a present, and did not cost the rate-payers one penny.

Before the church and the first row of pavilions there are two long terraces. parallel with each other; and there such of the inmates as can walk, but are too feeble to go further, afield, totter about from seat to seat. Below the terraces is a large garden where in summer many of these old people spend a good deal of their time. Not but that they are for the most part free to go elsewhere if they choose. From seven o'clock in the morning until nine at night they may betake themselves just where they will, even to Vienna, always providing that they have in their pockets the three pennies wherewith to pay their fare, and that they have dressed themselves as neatly as the old gate-keeper, whose standard is a high one, thinks they ought to be dressed when on visiting bent. Some among them, it is true, are not allowed to go beyond the garden-those, for instance. whose names are on the doctor's special list, and those who, as the Director has learnt by experience, cannot safely be trusted to pass unscathed through

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