Chu-pul, or the Mouse Fire, occurs in the twelfth month, on the day of the Mouse (or rat). Children light brands or torches of dry reeds or straw, and set fire to the dry herbage, stubble, and shrubbery on the borders of the roads, in order to singe the hair of the various field or ground-burrowing animals, or burn them out, so as to obtain a plentiful crop of cotton. At school, the pupils study according to the method all over Asia, that is, out loud, and noisily. This kang-siong, or deafening buzz, is supposed to be necessary to sound knowledge. Besides learning the Chinese characters and the vernacular alphabet, with tongue, ear, eye, and pen, the children master the ku-ku (“nine times nine”), or the multiplication table, and learn to work the four simple rules of arithmetic, and even fractions, involution, and evolution on the chon-pan, or sliding numeral frame. A “red mark” is a vermilion token of a good lesson, made by the examiner; and for a good examination passed rewards are given in the form of a first-rate dinner, or one or all of “the four friends of the study table”—pens, ink, paper, and inkstand, or brushes, sticks of “India” ink, rolls of unsized paper, and an inkstone or water-dropper. Writing a good autograph signature—“one’s own pen”—is highly commended. Sometimes money is given for encouragement, which the promising lad saves up in an earthen savings-bank. Not a few of the youth of the humbler classes, who work in the fields by day and study the characters by night, rise to be able officers who fill high stations. The French missionaries assure us that the normal Corean is fond of children, especially of sons, who in his eyes are worth ten times as much as daughters. Such a thing as exposure of children is almost unknown. In times of severe famine this may happen after failure to give away or sell for a season, that they may be bought back. Parents rarely find their family too numerous.