The school-house is usually situated in a central part of the village, and consists of a school-room capable of accommodating twenty or thirty scholars, a small bedroom for the teacher, and a diminutive kitchen also for his special use. The managers provide him with a four-poster, a high oblong table and a few chairs, and also a mosquito-net to be used during the warm weather when those plagues of the East carry on their campaign with such unceasing vigour against all animal life. They also place a table and chair in the school-room, which are to be for his own exclusive use, but beyond these they leave the furnishing of the place to the individual scholars, who bring their own stools and tables with them on the day that the studies begin. On the table are an inkstone, a diminutive water-bottle, two or three camel's-hair pens or brushes, a stick of Indian ink, and last, though not least, a good solid piece of bamboo with which the refractory and the indolent will frequently make acquaintance during the coming months of the session. There are also a miniature teapot and Lilliputian teacups, all deftly placed on a lacquer tray, ready for use whenever the master feels that he would like to refresh himself with a few sips of the popular beverage that "cheers but not inebriates." The school life of a boy in China would seem to one who has not been brought up in Western methods as a dreary and intolerable one, and such as would take the heart out of any English lad and make him hate the very sight of books as long as he lived. The duties of the day begin at a very early hour, and with certain intermissions for meals last until the evening shades have entered the school-room and blurred the faces of the books so that the strange, weird-looking words cannot be recognized one from the other. The little fellows have to rise as the dawn begins to fling its grey and trembling light across the darkness that clouds the earth, and to send its kindly messages into the homes of rich and poor. Feeling the terror of the master upon them, they quickly jump out of bed, and with no time to wash their faces or to brush their hair, they hurry along the various paths that lead to the school, where they find the teacher waiting for them, and with a frown upon his face if they should happen to be a few minutes late. The lads never enter the school-room without a feeling of restraint. It is considered that a cold and haughty kind of bearing on the part of the master is essential in order to maintain the discipline of the school. There is, therefore, very seldom if ever any feeling of affection or devotion between the scholars and him. To them he appears to have no kindliness of heart and no human sympathies, nor any lovable thought for any one of them. He is simply there as a kind of living machine to teach these youngsters this huge Chinese language, but as for sentiment or any tender feeling for them, that is utterly out of the question.