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Under ordinary circumstances these men can travel with their burden from twenty to thirty miles a day. Sometimes, also, when Yung Pak's father went about the streets of Seoul, he rode in a chair very similar to the one just described. The only difference was that it rested on a framework attached to a single wheel directly underneath.
If you had been in Yung Pak's place, you would have gone crazy with impatience. The servants were late in bringing around the ponies, and the process of loading them was a very slow one. But Yung Pak had long before learned to be patient under such circumstances. In fact, he seemed to care little whether the start were made in the morning or at noon.
All Koreans pay great honour to their dead parents, and tablets to their memory are placed in some room set apart for the purpose. Before these tablets sacrifices are offered. Yung Pak's father would have been almost overwhelmed with terror at thought of having no one to worship his memory and present offerings before his tablet.
The green waving grass and swaying foliage of the trees were ever new sources of joy and pleasure, and the delicate odours which the breezes bore to his sensitive nostrils were refreshing and life-giving. Among the strange sights which attracted Yung Pak's attention, as they rode along through the country, were some very curious figures erected by the roadside.
Yung Pak's curiosity satisfied, they returned to the road, mounted their ponies, and quickly caught up with the rest of the party. No further incidents of special importance marked this first day's journey, and shortly before nightfall they arrived at the town of Yong-pyöng. They found the village inn to be a series of low, small buildings built on three sides of a courtyard.
At Ki Pak's command a servant led him to a sleeping-room. Yung Pak and the other members of the family also retired, and were soon buried in peaceful slumber. It sometimes happened that Ki Pak, in performing his official duties, was obliged to make long journeys to various parts of Korea.
Then she would turn him over on his back and paddle his stomach with a ladle to make sure that he was well filled! Yung Pak's earliest days were spent very much as are those of most babies, whether they live in Korea or America. Eating and sleeping were his chief occupations.
Over the top-knot thus made the master of ceremonies placed the mang-kun, which was a crownless skull-cap made of a very delicate stiff gauze. This was tied on very tightly, so tightly that it made a deep ridge in Yung Pak's forehead and gave him a severe headache; but he bore the pain heroically and without flinching for was he not now a man?
You can easily imagine Yung Pak's joy and surprise one day when his father told him that he proposed to take his little son on his next journey. Ki Pak had been ordered by the king to go to Chang-an-sa, a city among the Diamond Mountains, near the eastern coast of Korea, and about eighty miles from Seoul.
One day, when the time came for the usual history lesson, Wang Ken said to Yung Pak: "I think that to-day I will tell you the story of King Taijo." At this Yung Pak's eyes sparkled, and he was all attention in a moment. He thought one of Wang Ken's stories was a great deal better than puzzling over Korean letters or struggling with long strings of figures.
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