The chief celebrations of the day and night in Yu-chom-sa are accompanied by the booming of the great bronze bell—an elaborate casting of the fourteenth century—and by the beating of a large circular drum many feet in circumference. Both instruments stand in their own towers in the courtyard. During the minor services, the genuflections of the priests are accompanied by the jarring notes of the small brass bells, which they strike repeatedly with deer-horns. A magnificent figure of Buddha sits in the Temple of the Lotus Blossom, in an attitude of impassive benignity behind a screen of glass, looking solemnly upon the devotions and pious exercises of his faithful attendants. This altar is recessed, the entire shrine being protected by plates of glass, and the offerings of rice, which are presented to the altar for benediction, stand without the screen. Among other temples and shrines at Yu-chom-sa there are the House of Everlasting Life, the Temple of the Water Month, the Temple of People who come from the West. There are fifty monks in Yu-chom-sa, twelve nuns, and eight boys who have not yet been admitted to the order. Many of the boys in these monasteries are quite young. Some have been handed over by their parents in extreme infancy, while others have been received out of the wide charity of the Buddhists, and dedicated to the service of the monasteries. These boys appear intelligent. They are taught little beyond the different chants and litanies, with the words of which they soon become familiar. The boys are clean and well fed; but the monks, if equally clean, are more sparing in their diet. Their frugal repast consists of rice and varieties of minced vegetables, cakes of pine nuts glued together with honey, and other cakes of popped rice and honey. The extreme richness of the dishes soon palls upon the palate. While managing to exist, signs of emaciation are noticeable in their bodies and faces. Among the nuns who are attracted to these different monasteries, there are many who have entered the cloister from religious motives, and a few who, alone in the world, find it a convenient spot in which to pass their lives. Neither class, however, encroaches upon the religious and devotional functions of the monks, but lives entirely apart, existing altogether in a world of their own making. [Illustration: YU-CHOM-SA]