My hospitable host at Nanking, His Excellency Tuan-Fang, hearing that I took an interest in education, declared that he would be very glad that I should see his schools. I expressed a regret that my ignorance of the language would impede me in thoroughly understanding what was being taught. He most hospitably said that I could myself examine {280} the pupils who were studying Western subjects, and who therefore spoke English or French, and that my wife should examine the girls' schools; that we should be accompanied by two interpreters as well as by the Director of Education, and that he would examine the schools in any branch of knowledge that I chose. So we sallied forth, a very imposing body, and I was asked to select what schools I should like to visit. Of course I selected the higher grade schools in which Western subjects were taught. The first school on which we descended was the Agricultural College. The teachers of Western subjects were two Japanese and one Chinaman. They were being taught in Chinese, but I had no difficulty in finding out in the first room we entered what they were learning, because the illustrations were well known to me, for they formed part of a book of elementary botany which I had at one time studied. I suggested to Mr. Tsêng, the interpreter, that the right course would be to ask the Japanese master to select his best pupils and that then he should examine them while I should suggest the questions. It soon became clear that all the Japanese teacher was doing was to teach them to copy the illustrations in the book and nothing else. For the first time we noticed what we afterwards discovered to be the invariable rule, that the Japanese are most perfect draughtsmen, and that every class taught by the Japanese always learnt to draw perfectly, though they learnt little else. The Chinese were rather pleased that the Japanese teacher cut such a sorry figure. We then {281} went to the next room. Again there was a Japanese teacher professing to explain the model of a steam-engine; again the pupils were obviously ignorant; again we bowed and they bowed and we left the room. The next room had quite a different atmosphere. Obviously efficient work was going on. The men were learning elementary chemistry. The teacher was a Chinaman who had been trained in London and spoke English perfectly. He was as straightforward as he was efficient. He frankly said that the progress that his pupils had made was very limited because of the short time that they had been at work. We congratulated him on the efficient way he was managing his class, and were interested to hear afterwards that he was a Christian. More than once we came across Christian Chinese, and did not know till later that they were Christians, but were struck by their efficiency, which sprang doubtless from a high ideal of work.