My room was ready for me, bright and cheerful. The creeper on the balcony was still green, and my windows looked out on to the courtyard of the neighbouring palace.
In the afternoon I went to the German Consulate, and passed on the way the Temple of Heaven—a pagoda standing on a hill, with a fair double roof and in front of it a marble altar.
It is a replica, a poor one it is true, of Pekin's masterpiece, but quite pretty from a scenic point of view.
From a small house at the corner a very babel of sound issues forth. It is the inarticulate mechanical repetition of one chapter—exactly the same method our own schoolmasters used to employ for instilling knowledge.
As the door in the courtyard is open, I enter. In front of me I find a room, not more than ten feet square, in which ten or more youngsters are crowded together. There they sit on the floor, dressed green instead of white, and their long hair hanging down in fine plaits.
THE IMPERIAL LIBRARY IN SEOUL
"One of those charming buildings full of originality"
[To face page 252]
Each has a big A B C book in his hand. Every word has a different letter; these they repeat, and in this way knowledge is driven into them. They pronounce everything out loud, moving the upper part of their body to right and left, backwards and forwards, all the time.
The dominie is seated in front, also squatting on the floor. His eyes are shielded by goggles of enormous size, and he wears on his head a horsehair crown.
He is wisdom personified, outwardly at any rate, and his thoughts seem to be ranging far away in the distance; and from his Olympic seat he casts an indifferent eye on his perspiring pupils. But, as a famous Chinese pedagogue says, "Chinese spelling and writing can only be mastered mechanically; the best scholar is the jackass."