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.
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 be-
