Tortoise Hill,
supposed to be inhabited by a tortoise spirit or devil, and at its
foot are some lakes in which it has long been said that the tortoise
washes its feet. Now these lakes are on property owned by the Hanyang
Steel & Iron Works and they decided a few years ago that they would
either drain off the water or else fill up the lakes so as to get more
land. But before they got started the Chinese civil authorities heard
of it and notified the Hanyang Company that such a proceeding could
not be tolerated. The tortoise would have nowhere to wash his feet,
and would straightway bring down the wrath of Heaven on all the
community!

It is from superstitions such as these that the schools must free the
Chinese before the way can be really cleared for the introduction of
Christianity. The teacher is as necessary as the preacher. And the
task of getting the masses even to the point where they can read and
write is supremely difficult. The language, it must be remembered, has
no alphabet. Each word is made not by joining several letters
together, as with us, but by making a distinct character--each
character an intricate and difficult combination of lines, marks, and
dots. Or perhaps the word may be formed by joining two distinct
characters together. For example, to write "obedience" in Chinese you
write together the characters for "leaf" and "river," the significance
being that true obedience is as trusting {130} and unresisting as the
fallen leaf on the river's current. My point is, however, that for
each word a distinct group of marks (like mixed-up chicken tracks)
must be piled together, and the task of remembering how to recognize
and write the five thousand or more characters in the language would
make an average American boy turn gray at the very thought. My friend
Doctor Tenney, of the American Legation in Peking, asserts that at
least five years of the average Chinese pupil's school life might be
saved if the language were based on an alphabet like ours instead of
on such arbitrary word-signs.

There is one thing that must be said in favor of the Chinese system of
education, however, and that is the emphasis it has always laid on
moral or ethical training. The teaching, too, seems to have been
remarkably effective. Take so basic a matter as paying one's debts,
for example: it is a part of the Chinaman's religion to get even with
the world on every Chinese New Year, which comes in February. If he
fails to "squa