Doubtless, it is partly owing to the religious element. The yellow-robes themselves are objects of veneration, and Buddha, as it is claimed, was only a teacher, so that the office of teaching, as well as the dress of the teacher, is calculated to inspire fear and respect. And perhaps the _birch_ or ratan discipline, which is often terribly severe, may have something to do with it. A mistake in writing or spelling usually brings down the teacher’s lash, and this is called _son hi chum_ (teaching to remember); for a more heinous offence of disobedience or want of respect toward his teacher the pupil’s hands are tied around a post, and then he is whipped――not four or five strokes, but it is one, two or three _dozen_, as the case seems to require. A teacher is supposed to take an interest in his pupil, and the pupil to be improving, just in proportion to the amount of corporal punishment administered. One day a man brought his boy to put him into the “King’s School.” After the arrangements were all made and he was about to say “Good-bye” to his boy, he turned to the principal of the school and said, “Please whip him a great deal; I want him to learn fast. If at any time you think he deserves one dozen, please give him two dozen, and if you think he deserves two dozen, please give him four dozen. Don’t let him be a dunce.” And with this loving injunction he took his leave. Another little boy has dropped out of the same school entirely, the probable reason being that his grandmother’s repeated request to _te hi mak mak_ (whip him a great deal) was entirely disregarded. These wat-schools――if schools they may be called――are free from all the trammels of school laws and school committees, each teacher being left free to follow his own will in everything. Neither are there any school-houses or school-furniture. The teacher seats himself, tailor-fashion, on the floor of his own filthy, cheerless room, and his pupils sit in the same way around him. There is only one school-book (which is a kind of combined primer and reader), and after that is mastered the learner must practice reading on whatever he can find; it may be a fabulous tale, a drama or a ghost-story, but certainly it will not be a good and truthful book that will elevate and improve the reader, for the literature of Siam has nothing of that kind. Occasionally the books that have been prepared by the missionaries are found in the hands of these wat-boys, but that is the exception and not the rule. These schools have no regular school-term, and of course no vacations; no regular hours for study, and of course none for play; no classes, and of course no emulation and no chance for a dull boy to be helped over the hard places by his near neighbor. The whole work is controlled by the whim of the teacher at the time, without principle and without rule.