The first thing inculcated in a child’s mind is respect for his father. All insubordination is immediately and sternly repressed. Far different is it with the mother. She yields to her boy’s caprices and laughs at his faults and vices without rebuke. The child soon learns that a mother’s authority is next to nothing. In speaking of his father a lad often adds the words “severe,” “terrible,” implying the awe and profound respect in which he holds his father. (Something of the same feeling prevails as in Japan, where the four dreadful things which a lad most fears, and which are expressed in a rhyming proverb, are: “Earthquake, wind, fire, and father,” or “daddy.”) On the contrary, in speaking of his mother, he adds the words “good,” “indulgent,” “I’m not afraid of her,” etc. A son must not play nor smoke in his father’s presence, nor assume free or easy posture before him. For lounging, there is a special room, like a nursery. The son waits on his father at meals and gets his bed ready. If he is old or sickly, the son sleeps near him and does not quit his side night or day. If he is in prison the son takes up his abode in the vicinity, to communicate with his parent and furnish him with luxuries. In case of imprisonment for treason, the son at the portal, on bended knees day and night, awaits the sentence that will reduce himself to slavery. If the accused is condemned to exile, the son must at least accompany his father to the end of the journey, and, in some cases, share banishment with him. Meeting his father in the street, the son must make profound salute on his knees, in the dust, or in the ditch. In writing to him, he must make free use of the most exaggerated honorifics which the Corean knows. The practice of adoption is common, as it is abnormally so in all countries where ancestral worship is prevalent and underlies all religions. The preservation of the family line is the supreme end and aim of life. In effect all those persons are descendants of particular ancestors who will keep up the ancestral sacrifices, guard the tablets and observe the numerous funeral and mourning ceremonies which make life such a burden in Eastern Asia. Daughters are not adopted, because they cannot accomplish the prescribed rites. When parents have only a daughter, they marry her to an adopted son, who becomes head of the family so adopted into. Even the consent of the adopted, or of his parents, is not always requisite, for as it is a social, as well as a religious necessity, the government may be appealed to, and, in case of need, forces acceptance of the duty. In this manner, as in the patriarchal age of biblical history, a man may be coerced into “raising up seed” to defunct ancestors.