One advantage of sleeping upon boards is, that it promotes early rising; but ere I got up next morning, the children of the hamlet were in the temple, reading in their singsong way the Chinese trimetrical classic which they are taught to commit to memory long before they understand almost a word of its meaning. The contrast which Celestial children present to those of the West is striking. They are quiet, calm, perpetrate no tricks, and rarely or never play about. In fact, their demeanour is not unlike that of aged Europeans; while the old men, on the other hand, display something of the liveliness of childhood, especially when engaged in their favourite amusement of flying kites. Though teaching was thus carried on in the temple, yet that building was specially dedicated to the worship of the ancestors of the villagers. “The real religion of China,” it has been truly said, “is not the worship of heaven and earth, nor of idols, but of Confucius and of one’s own ancestors.” The more educated classes, including the mandarins, have special reverence for Confucius; but the mass of the people worship the spirits of their ancestors with profound awe. They believe that each family has a close peculiar interest in all its members, whether before or after death, not one being able to suffer without all being afflicted. Each house has its _lararium_, in the shape of a small temple, a room, or even a niche in the wall, where the family is poor. This hall at Kan-how had many ancestral tablets hung up in it, and also some for the propitiation of _kwei_, or friendless hungry spirits, for whom the Chinese have a singular dread. Every district in the country has a temple with the tablets of all persons whose families are extinct. To the imagination of the yellow-skinned children of Han there is something very awful in the idea of a forlorn shivering ghost, wandering through the air without any progeny on earth to care for it, to give it meat-offerings, or the warm regard of human hearts; and they believe that such friendless spirits are always likely to become malignant powers, and to work them evil. Some districts have a ceremony, every ten years or so, called the “Universal Rescue,” for the special benefit of such spirits.