If a boy recites once or twice a week, all is well, and if he recites only once or twice a month, still it is all right; and if in the course of eight or ten years he has learned very little, there is no one to complain. He has at least been kept out of the way at home, and now he is of such an age that he can become a _nain_ and spend a few more years in obtaining a smattering of the Pali or sacred language, and after this he can become a full-fledged priest, which is the summit of the fondest parent’s wishes. While a boy is at a wat he is not usually called a scholar or pupil, but a _wat-boy_――a name which generally implies everything that is naughty. His companions are idle, vicious fellows, fond of cockfighting, swearing and gambling, and he grows up among them bad just in proportion as he is clever and gifted. The conservative men of Siam are bewailing these latter days, and among other things they aver that wat education is not what it was in the good old times long ago――that then the priests were more strict with their boys, and made them work and study more than they do now. This may be so. But if the men who were educated in the temples years ago, and who should now be the pillars and producers of the country, are to be taken as exponents of what that system of education can do for manhood, then we may safely infer that temple-life was at that time just what it is now――a school of idleness and vice, and those who leave its haunts are fitted only for a lazy, aimless existence. This the natives themselves freely admit, and the time has evidently come when something better is demanded. While Siam has been doing, perhaps, the best she knew for her sons, her daughters in some respects have been much better off. They are not supposed to need any education, and are therefore trained from childhood to help their mothers with all kinds of heavy as well as light work. Thus it comes to pass that the girls grow up to be the “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” the planters and the traders of Siam, while the influence of their brothers is to a great extent a dead weight on the prosperity of the country. And now what have missionaries done to show Siam a better way? Christianity implies knowledge, and missionaries believe in schools. “The Oriental mind is quick in childhood, but early stops its growth;” then to civilize and Christianize such a people the most hopeful plan is to begin with the children. So, wherever a Presbyterian mission has been established in Siam the church and the school have grown up together.