It is no exaggeration to say that there is nothing really intellectual in any part of the early schooling of an ordinary Chinese boy. Asarule the teacher does not concern himself with his pupils, further than to drag them over a specified course, or at least to attempt to dose, The parents of the Jad are equally indifferent, or even more so. Ifthe father can himself read, here members that he learned to do so by a long and thorny road, and he thinks it natural that his son should traverse it likewise. If he cannot read, he recognises the fact that he knows nothing at all about the matter, and that it is not his business to interfere, The teacher is hired to teach—let him do At home the pupil has no mental stimulus of any sort, no books, magazines or papers, and if he had them, his barren studies at school would not have fitted him to comprehend such literature. The range of characters which he has learned, often very imperfectly, is totally different from those in cum-mon use, and largely of no value except asa step to the classics, If the pupil goes on, as a small proportion of them do, after having theoretically mastered the classics, to study literary composition, histasksarefar more difficulty than before. Chinese composition is an exceedingly intricate study, and requires a highly developed memory, wide acquaintance with the written character, anda patience which must be almost infinite. For those who do not go so far as to learn to compose, their education may be said to be finished before it is fairly under way. When it is dead and buried, as it not improbably will be within a few years, it might appropriately have carved upon its tomb-stone, the epitaph said to have marked the resting place of a still-born infant, "Since so quickly I am done for, Iwonder what I was begun for.'
Considering the utter juicelessness of his studies, which are not inaptly compared to gnawing a wooden pear," it is by no means singular that the great majority of pupils when they leave school, cast aside all their little stock of learning, as a worn-out pair of shoes belonging to their early days, but of no subsequent value. Notwithstanding the vast number of books in the lists of Chinese literature, there are very few which are popularly available. The books to be found in an average Chinese house, albeit sume of the inmates can read', are generally scant in number, and limited in range—perhaps the one most sure to have been read, is the historical novel called the 'Three Kingdoms.' But the style and the characters are alike far beyond the capacity of most lads who have had only five or six years of schooling. The cheap little books which are everywhere sold, are full of false characters, badly printed, and sv difficult to comprehend for a boy with but a limited knowledge, that they might as well be written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, The practical result is, that the whole education of a vast number of Chinese boys has the same relation to their subsequent life, familiarity with the tones' of the Greek language, has to the business career of the man who has graduated from an English university. Ten years from Oxford, what fies it (to any one but a professor of Greek) that ''in the genitive plural of the first declension of Greek nouns, the final syllable is umfexed, but that feminine adjective jes in os ¢ on are masculine, but other feminine adjectives and participles are perispomeua in the genitive plural, and that chrestes, ophue, etesiai, and chlorines the genitive plural remain' paroxytones? Happily there are other items in the liberal education of an English student, which will probably abide with him, while in the multitude of Chinese lads, Imust the whole of what they have with such incredible labour acquired, will vanish like the morning cloud and the early dew, and like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack behind, There is one incident in the life of the Chinese lad, which assumes in his eyes some degree of importance, to which most occidental boys are strangers. This is the ceremony of donning the cap, in other words of becoming; and his mart The age at which this takes plac is far from being a fixed one, but is often in the vicinity of sixteen. The customs observed doubtless vary, but in rural districts they frequently consist in nothing more exciting than the playing by a band of music in the evening before his marriage, and a visit on the part of the young man to each house in the village where he makes his prostration, much as at the New Year, and is henceforth to be considered a full-grown man, and is protected to some extent from snubs because he is only a child.' The more conspicuous part of the affair, however, is the wedding. This proceeding is based upon principles so radically different from those to which we are accustomed, that it is generally for a Westerner to become reconciled either to the Chinese theory or to the practice. To us, marriage seems suitable for persons who have attained, not merely years of puberty, but certain maturity of development, compatible with the new relations which they now assume. We regard the man and wife as the basis and centre ofa new family, and there is ancient and adequate authority for the doctrine that they should leave father and mother. In China it is altogether otherwise. The boy and girl who are married are not a new family, but the latest branch in a tall family tree, independent of which they have no corporate existence. Tt is by no means uncommon for boys to be married at the age of ten, although this is regarded asa trifle premature, The physical, intellectual, or moral development of the parties concerned, has nothing whatever to do with the matter of their marriage, which is an affair controlled by wholly different considerations, Sometimen it is hastened bocaune an old grandmother is in feeble health and insists upon seeing the main business of life done up, before she is called away. Sometimes the motive is to settle the division of a piece of property so that is shall be impossible for the elder heirs to retreat from the settlement, Quite as often, the real motive for hastening the wedding is the felt need in the boy's family of an additional servant, which need will be supplied by the introduction of new bride" It is for this reason that 60 many Chinese women ate older than their husband: When they are betrothed, the bigger they are the better, because they do all the more work, To a Chinese, there is no more sense of incongruity in marrying & little slip of @ boy. simply because "ho is. young, and perhaps not more than half "the "size ut. hia bride, than there would be in playing checkers with buttons, and then efowning the. rst Dattom that happened to get for the king row. What signifies whether the button ins small one or large one since it has reached the last row, aid has now a'sct of moves of its own, a fact which must be Fecognised by doubling itself. It is not otherwise with the Chinese boy. fle isa double bution, itis true, but he is nothing bot a button still and a small one, and but an insignificant part of a wide and complicated gaine, Durning the celebration of P'Ghinese wedding it does not strike the spectator that the bridegroom is the contre Of interest, and the bride is 80 only for the time being and in consequence of the curiosity which is felt to see what sort of a bargain the family has made in getting her. 'The young wan is ordered cut of the apartment' where ho. has been kept in snbuah-—eccording to the customs in some regions—likean ox for the sacrifice. He is totali upon his knees at a word of command, and k*o to with intermittent equence to a great variety of persons, until his knees are stiffandhis legslame. Hiseyesare fixed upon the ground, asf in deepest humility, and the tnat awkward Chinese youth. will perform the details of this try log ordeal with natural grace, with which the most well-bred occidental youth could searcely hope movie, and which he assuredly could not hope tosurpass, When the complicated protracted ceremonies azo all over, our young lad is, it is true, a married man, but he la not the *head' of any family, not even of his own. He is still under the same control of his father as before, his bride is under the control of the mother-in-law, to a degree which it is dificult for us to comprehend. If the youthful husband is trying to learn to compose essays, his marriage does not at all interrupt his educational enterprise and as soon as the ceremonies are over, he goos on just as before. If heis dull, and cannot make the seven empty particles' terror of the inexpert Chinese essayi into his laborious sentences to the ratiofaction of his teacher, he is not unlikely to be beaten over the head for his lack of critical acumen, and can then go weeping home to have his wife stick a black gummy plaster over the aren of his chastisement, We have known a Chinese boy who had the Gropey in an aggravated fami but who could persuaded to take a single dose of bitter. If he wraa pressed to do ea by his fond mother, he either ' rowed,' or cried. If he was not allowed to cat two whole water melons at a time his tactics were the same, a domestic. scene either of violent temper, or of dismal howling grief, He was merely prolonging into youth the plan universally adopted in the childhood of Chinese children. Yoh this sensitive infant of seventeen, hed been married for several years, and leaves a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.