A Corean Ceremony

As I entered Seoul a royal procession, with which the king visited some of the ancestral tombs, was returning by another gate, writes a Seoul correspondent, lts novel feature was that the minister of war rode in Europeau evening dress and a "bowler" hat. On the day following I witnessed a ceremonial new in Corean history, and which may have far-reaching results to Coreans. The Japanese have resolved to clean the Augean stable of official corruption, and compelled the king to begin the task by proceeding in state to the altar of heaven and there taking an oath before the spirits of hls ancestors to the proposed reforms. Kis majesty, by éxaggerating a trivial ailment, had for some time delayed the ceremony, and, even the day before, a dream, in which an ancestral spirit appeared to him adjurins him not to depart from ancestral ways, terrified him from taking the proposed pledge. After a long delay and much questioning as to whether at the last moment the king would resist the foreign pressure, the procession, In solemn silence, emerged from the palace gate; huge flags, on trident headed poles, purple bundies carried aloft, a stand of sacred stones conveyed with much ceremony, groups of scarlet and blue robed men in hats shaped like fools' caps of the same colors, the king's personal servants in yellow robes and yellow bamboo hats, decorated with pink roses, and men carrying bannerets. Then came the red silk umbrella, followed by - not the magniflcent state chair, with lts forty bearers, but a plain wooden chair with a green roof and glass sides, in which sat the sovereign, looking very pale and dejected, borne by only four men. At a short distance followed the crown prince in a similar chair. Mandarins, ministers, and military officers were then assisted on their caparisoned ponies, and each, with two attendants holding hls stirrups and two mora leading his pony, all in gorgeous raiment, feil in line behind the home minister on a dark donkey conspiouous by his foreign guard. Half an hour latei, by passing along a street so narrow that two horsemen cannot ride abreast, the king reached the altar of heaven, where the military escort was' íeft out[de the outer wall,, and only the king, dignitáries ánd attendants proceeded to the altar. The groupings of the scarlet-robed men under the dark pines was most effective from an artistlc point of view, and from a political standpoint the taking of the oath by the Corean king was one of the most significant acts in the tedious drama of the present war.