Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/345

WIFELY QUALITIES, 317 -which indicated the possession of great mental superiority. The damsel's father at once decided to have Sidsu as the husband of his daughter, and the marriage was consummated. Sidsu afterwards became famous as the first writer in China ; and to this day, scholars are then most highly gratified, when their pen is compared to that of Sidsu. The Chinese say that some of his hand-writing is now extant In the time of the East Han (A.I). 25-220) there was a Liang Hoong who married a woman, Mung Gwang, who came magnificently dressed, and her hair beautifully done up, as she entered the house as a bride. Hoong said : I dont want this woman to wife.*' By and by she appeared without any ornaments in her hair, clothed in cotton garments, and with household utensils in her hands, with which she was working. Hoong was delighted, and said, " This is my wife." Woo Yuwei had a daughter whom he advised, on going to be married, to manifest no special love. The daughter asked, if she was not to love, whether she should hate ? The mother replied i " You should neither love nor hate, according to your private inclinations. This simply means that she should love what her judgment proved to be right and good, and hate what was similarly proved to be wrong ; permitting herself to be swayed neither to love nor hate by her own passions. Death. When a child or young unmarried person dies, there is littlo expense connected with interment. He is wrapped up in the bed clothes on which he died, with an outer covering of rice straw, and buried. But married persons after death are coffined and buried with much ceremony, and at great expense. When the father dies the son closes the glazed eyes ; hence the phrase, noon gam gimda upda — " he has no eye closer" — equivalent to, he has no son." Immediately the person is dead, all the men and women of the family undo their hair and let it fall about their head ; while they weep and wail," as do the Chinese, and as did the Jewa The dead body lies where