e five
hundred of the best scholars of the land, that none might remain to
write of his cruel deed. But the classics had been too well learned by
the scholars, and were reproduced from memory to help form the
minds of China for many tens of years. This could be done to-day if a
similar tragedy were enacted. Thousands of boys have committed the
great books to heart, and this storing in the mind of enormous books
has developed in our race a marvellous memory, if, as others say, it
has taken away their power of thinking for themselves.

Which is the best? Only time will tell. But we are told that the literati
of China, the aristocracy of our land, must go. Yet, as of old, it is the
educated men who will move China. Without them, nothing can be
done, for the masses will respect education and the myriads will
blindly follow a leader whom they feel to be a true scholar; and it will
be hard to change the habits of a people who have been taught for
centuries that education is another word for officialdom.

This new education, in my mind, must not be made so general; it
must be made more personal. Three things should be taken into
account: who the boy is, where he is, and where he is going. It is not
meet to educate the son of my gate-keeper the same as my son. He
should be made a good workman, the best of his kind, better to fill the
place to which the Gods have called him. Give our boys the modern
education, if we must, but remember and respect the life work each
may have to follow. Another thing we should remember: the progress
in the boy's worldly knowledge should not make him hard in his revolt
against his Gods, nor should his intelligence be freed without teaching
him self-control. That is fatal for our Eastern race. Let him learn, in his
books and in his laboratories, that he moulds his destiny by his acts
in later life, and thus gain true education, the education of the soul as
well as of the mind.

I have written thee a sermon, but it is a subject on which we mothers
are thinking much. It is before us daily, brought to our courtyards by
our sons and daughters, and we see the good and the evil of trying to
reach at a single bound the place at which other nations have at last
arrived after centuries of weary climbing.

I must go to the women's quarters and stop their chattering. Oh,
Mother mine, why didst thou send to me that priest of thine?

[Illustration: Mylady26.]

Kwei-li.

18
Dear Mother,
I must introd