When the time comes for a boy to go to school, a lucky day is chosen by a fortune-teller, and young Hopeful, spotless in dress, and with head well shaved, is taken to be introduced to his teacher. In the neat bundle which he carries as he trots along by his father’s side he has ‘the four gems of the study’ ready for use, that is to say, a pen which has a brush for a nib, a cake of ink, a stone slab for rubbing down the ink with water, and a set of books. As soon as the new pupil has been taken into the school and introduced in the proper way, the teacher asks the spirit of Confucius to help the little scholar with his work. Then the master sits down and the boy bows his head to the ground, beseeching his master to teach him letters. After this a ‘book-name,’ such as Flourishing Virtue, Literary Rank, Opening Brightness, is chosen and given to the lad; for a Chinese boy gets a new name when he goes to school. The room in which the budding scholar will sit at a little black table for many a day to come is often dark and dingy, with tiny windows and a low tiled roof. A book, called _The Juvenile Instructor_, tells how children used to be trained, in the good old days of China’s greatness. It says: “When able to talk, lads must be instructed to answer in a quick, bold tone, and girls in a slow and gentle one. At the age of seven they should be taught to count and name the points of the compass, but at this age boys and girls should not be allowed to sit on the same mat nor to eat at the same table. At eight they must wait for their superiors and prefer others to themselves.... Let children always be taught to speak the simple truth, to stand erect in their proper places, and to listen with respectful attention.” At an old-fashioned Chinese school the pupils have no A B C; but they have to learn by heart ‘characters,’ that is, the signs which stand for words in their books. Boys who expect afterwards to go into business are taught to do sums by a clerk or shopkeeper, who is hired to teach them; but the ordinary schoolboys are taught no arithmetic, or geography, or dates. Perhaps you think you would like to go to a Chinese school! But wait a bit until you hear what Chinese boys have to learn. Beginners stand in a row before the master’s table and are taught to read the first line of the _Three Character Classic_, until they know it pretty well. Then they sit in their places and repeat it aloud. If one of them forgets a word, he goes up to the table again and asks his master how to read it, but he must not go too often.