n Korea go to school when they are very young. The girls do
not go to school. They stay at home to help their mothers. But girls
whose parents are rich have teachers at home to teach them reading and
writing and other things.

In school, the teacher sits on a straw mat on the floor. The boys also
sit on the floor on straw mats. They say their lessons out loud. They
write their lines from the top to the bottom of the page. The people
in China and Japan, as you know, write in the same way. The boys of
Korea learn to count on a _chon-pan_. The chon-pan is much like the
counting box they have in the schools in China. It is made of little
balls on a frame of wires fixed in a box. The boys also learn by heart
the wise sayings of great men.

The boys in Korea have some very nice toys. But the best playthings
they have are their kites. They make their kites fight battles in the
air, just as the boys do in Japan. Every boy tries to tear down every
other boy's kite. This is done by pulling the strings across one
another. Sometimes the sky is full of beautiful kites, which jump and
dash about as if they were alive.

The boys also have fine, large pinwheels. They make these pinwheels
whirl around in the wind. The boys also spin tops, and they play
"seesaw," and jump the rope.

The boys in Korea are fond of fishing. Nearly every boy has a fishing
rod and goes fishing whenever he can. Sometimes the boys have great
fun going around dressed like their fathers. They wear wooden swords
and little bows and arrows like soldiers. They make straw figures of
men, and with their swords they strike off the heads of these straw men.

But the boys have to work as well as play. Many of the peddlers in
Korea are boys. They sell candy and other things. The girls do a
great deal of work at home. The first thing they learn to do is to sew.

Would you like to know how the women iron their clothes? They wrap
each piece around a stick and lay it on the floor. Then they sit down
and beat the piece on the stick with wooden clubs. In this way they
make the clothes as smooth as a Chinaman makes the linen which he irons.

[Illustration: Korean Girls Ironing Clothes.]

The houses in Korea are one or two stories high. They are made of wood
or clay, and sometimes the roofs are of straw. The windows are high,
and the doors are often so low that the people have to stoop down to go
in. The rooms are very small and have hardl