Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 1 November 1894, Page 3

Notes and Events.

It is a sad thing when nations go to war, yet it certainly tends to let one part of the world know a little more of tli9 doings and people in the other part of it. Thus the China — -« Japan war is letting a lot of light into the ways of the Japanese and the Koreans, whioh is most interesting.

The staple food of the Koreans, (some authorities spell Korea with a K and some with a C, it appears to be a case of " You pay's your money and you take's your choice " in the manner of spelling) is fish and rice, except in the north where it is fish and millet. Meat is scarcely eaten and game is untouched. Korea is subject to * famines, the rice fails. The millet fails. Everything fails except fish.

The Koreans, says a writer in an English paper, take a great deal of medicine, and it never seem to do them any harm. For tbe rich, pills of incredible size are thickly gilded and placed in elaborate boxes. The poor take smaller pills, ungilded, and- omit the boxes altogether. I Very many Koreans take medicine at stated intervals without the

slightest reference to their state of health at the time. These systematic persons do not take medicine when they are ill, unless the illness has the good taste to fall upon their duly appointed medicine day. This is how an old Korean explained the philosophy of the medicine -regularly taken theory : "On every seventh day you rest whether you are tired or not ; and on all the other days you work whether you are tired or not ; so do we take our medicine once in so many moon?, because it is well to observe system, to be regular."

There are many admirable traits — and some traits not admirable — that are common to every man, woman and child in the peninsula. They are all rather timid ; they are none ot them over fond of exercise ; they all have enormous appetites ; they all love music ; they all love tobacco and Japanese beer ; they all — even those who can't write, compose poetry ; they all draw and paint well.

Attributes to dignity are in great demand. The enormous spectacles worn are guiltless of any refractive qualities, being made of simple ordinary glass, but they are supposed to add to the dignity of the wearer.