other at the height of a table.
On these they laid two boards, two and a half feet long, and this was
their furniture. They sat and wrote and cooked and ate and slept in
these cells. In case it did not rain, their feet could stick out into
the corridor so they might stretch out on the hard floor. The exams
lasted eight days, divided into three divisions. They went in on the
eighth day of the eighth moon in the evening. They wrote the first
subject until the afternoon of the tenth. Then they left for the night.
On the afternoon of the eleventh they came in for the second subject and
wrote till the afternoon of the thirteenth, when there was another day
off. On the evening of the fourteenth they re-entered the cell for the
third period and that ended on the evening of the sixteenth. They had
free communication with each other in the corridors, which were closed
and locked. No one could approach them from the outside for any reason.
Often they died. But if they could only get put into a corridor with a
friend who knew, the biggest fool in China could get his paper written
for him, and he could pass and become an M. A., or something
corresponding to that degree. Thus were the famous literati of China
produced. Preparation for the exam was not the affair of the government,
and might be acquired in any possible way. The houses of the examiners
are still in good condition and might be made into a school very easily.
But do you think they will do that? Not at all. The government has not
ordered a school there, and so they will be torn down or else used for
some official work. You can have no conception of how far the
officialism goes till you see it. We also visited a Confucian Temple,
big and used twice each year. It is like all temples in that it is
covered with the dust of many years' accumulation. If you were to be
dropped in any Chinese temple you would think you had landed in a
deserted and forgotten ruin out of reach of man. We went to the Temple
of Hell on Sunday, and the gentleman who accompanied us suggested to the
priest that the images ought to be dusted off. "Yes," said the priest,
"it would be better if they were."

NANKING, Thursday, May 22.

The returned students from Japan hate Japan, but they are all at loggers
with the returned students from America, and their separate
organizations cannot get together. Many returned students have no jobs,
apparently because they will not go into business or begin a