Sir One Long Body and Madam Thousand Feet

In the land of Morning Radiance, where the family names have only one syllable, such as Kim, Yi, Pil, Wun, Hap, etc., they wear shoes, but these are not made of black leather. The people neither stand up on wooden clogs as in Japan, nor case their feet in straight soled gaiters, without heels, as in China. The gentlemen put on white socks with tough hide soles, and the ladies don dainty slippers with the pointed toes turned up. Common folks’ sandals are made chiefly of straw and twine and it takes a good deal of cordage to complete a pair.

Now there once lived under an old stone below a persimmon tree a fair young creature named Miss Thousand Feet. She wore lead-colored clothes and had so many toes to take care of that any one who tried to count them soon got tired; so he stopped and called the whole amount a thousand, which was a number as round as herself. She was as proud of each one of her many little feet as a Chinese lady, who has only two of them. Miss Thousand Feet was very modest, however, and if any one stepped on her toes, or touched her, she curled up, first into a ring and then into a ball, so that men, by a pun on her family name, called her “a pill millipede,” for she belonged to the Pil family, one of the most famous in all Korea.

Miss Thousand Feet was very happy living under a damp stone in the cool earth and she played a good deal. But by and by, when she grew up, her parents told her it was time for her to get married. So they looked around, to see if any gentleman in the whole creation was worthy of her, not only to make a suitable husband, but also a good match.

Now in another village lived a rich, fat, young and promising male creature, named Mr. Long Body, of the Wum family. His business was to eat his way through the ground, and pile up little curled heaps of mud on the surface, and at this work he was kept very busy. He had to look out for the birds, for they enjoyed eating folks like him, he was so soft and sweet. Constant exercise in moving through the ground kept his body shining, so that altogether, as earthworms go, he was quite handsome and considered a good catch for Miss Thousand Feet. Furthermore, as he had no feet and she had so many, while his body was long and hers quite short, it was supposed that one would make up where the other lacked and that both would be happy together as husband and wife.