The interpreter who conducted Mrs. King, the Consul's wife, and my wife over this and the following schools had removed his own daughter to a mission school, thinking she would receive better teaching. As regards the musical part of the instruction there can be no question but that he was right. The next school she saw was also for the children of the gentry, who supported it by subscriptions. There were 140 girls, fifty of whom were boarders whose parents paid for their board. These fifty young ladies all slept in one room, and their toilet arrangements impressed my wife as anything but luxurious; the effect was more like a steerage cabin on a big liner than an ordinary school dormitory. The class-rooms {290} were all on the ground floor, leading from courtyard to courtyard in Chinese house fashion. The instruction seemed to be mainly Chinese, with attention paid to geography, drawing, and fancy work, English being taught by a young Chinese teacher in a rather elementary way. The mistresses appeared in dignified skirts, no doubt as a symbol of authority. The last school she was shown was larger and less exclusive. It was well organised, the classes being arranged with sense and discrimination. There were 200 pupils of all ages and ranks, the school being a public one. They were mostly dressed in black. Ten lady teachers presided over this school, including a normal class with a male superintendent; the whole in Chinese buildings. The teaching comprised Confucian ethics, the Chinese characters, arithmetic, geography, drawing from flat copies, and English given by a young Chinese girl who had been educated in a Shanghai mission school. The instruction seemed to be good on the whole. About one-fourth of the scholars boarded at the school. Attached to it was a kindergarten managed rather sleepily by two Japanese. Again the children's singing was hardly worthy of the name. My wife was impressed by the inferiority of the Government girls' schools to the mission girls' schools in almost every particular. Doubtless they will soon improve, but at present the Government does not seem able to obtain efficient teachers, and is much too inclined to spend vast sums on practically useless {291} apparatus--useless because the instructors do not understand how to use it.