Very different was the Naval School. Here reigned efficiency, for the Naval School is under the partial control of two officers lent by His Majesty's Navy. The limit of their control was the limit of their efficiency. For instance, the Chinese Government sometimes refused to let their naval officers be shown an actual ship; their idea was much the same {288} as that of the lady who forbid her son to bathe until he had learnt to swim. The difficulty was very great for anything like practical instruction. Continual representations induced the Chinese Government to allow the boys to have a trip on the river in an old ship. The moment this was accomplished there was great self-congratulation on the part of the Chinese official; from resisting this reasonable suggestion they changed to self-laudation at the wisdom of accepting the plan. The efficiency of the teaching was not only hindered by the want of practical knowledge, which is of course fatal to naval efficiency, but these officers had also to complain of what so many other Europeans have to complain--first, that the people whom they were sent to teach did not know enough English, so that much of their time was spent in teaching elementary English; secondly, that their classes were not large enough. Far away the most effective way of using a Western teacher would be to use them as we saw them used in one school. The Western teacher was supported by two or three Chinese assistants; he gave his lecture in English, and the pupils took notes; then the assistants went round the desks, looked at the notes, and explained in Chinese all those points that the pupils had not fully taken in. This plan has another advantage, that it trains these Chinese teachers to continue the work of a Western teacher, and in some ways it is a more efficient system than the normal schools. The Western teacher of course exercises a general {289} supervision over his class and maintains order and discipline. While I had been busy with the boys' schools, my wife had been busy with the girls' schools. She was taken over the Viceroy's School, the one already described where the little girls showed such surprising knowledge of the Chinese Classics. Her experience was less happy than mine. The children were being drilled by a Japanese instructress who could hardly play at all; she used a small gem harmonium, and the drilling was little better than a feeble country dance. The same instructress was responsible for a singing lesson; she played with one hand on a harmonium, and allowed the children to bawl as they pleased without either time or tune. All the pupils at this school were day scholars.