Close to the andon the pupils, one at a time, in the order of their arrival, bring their books and sit _vis-à-vis_ with the teacher. The latter first hears the pupil read the last lesson and then, after it has been thoroughly reviewed, reads for him the next lesson. He does it looking at the pupil's book from the top; the learner follows him aloud, pointing out every word he reads with a stick. This is repeated until the scholar has nearly learned the text. The scholar then returns home to go over the lesson by himself. In this manner I have torn my Japanese and Chinese authors, just as an American boy blots his Cæsar and Virgil; and certain passages come up even now as spontaneously as the translation of "_Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres_."
In school an examination was held at the end of each month; how hard we used to work for it! It decided one's standing in class, and all through the following month he had to remain in a given seat. Everybody wished to be at the head and that bred strong emulation. The night before the examination I would study and read aloud all the evening; as it became late my eyelids tended to droop and my voice to falter; my father would bid me not to be over-anxious and retire. The next morning he would wake me early in compliance with my request, and light me a lamp to study by. It was a bad habit, I grant; but if I work half as conscientiously now as I did then I shall be the wiser for it.
My class was composed of about six members; we met in each other's houses outside of school hours to go over our reviews together. One of the boys was a carpenter's son and possessed with a mechanical craze. Whenever we gathered in his house he would offer, unsolicited, to explain and exhibit a gimcrack he had made with his father's tools, and we did scarcely any studying. Another of our schoolmates was a farmer's son, a big shame-faced lad sent to our beloved master's to be educated in the city; he boarded with him. Country-fellow as we called him, he acquired his preceptor's hand in writing so well that nobody in school chose to pick a quarrel with him on the question of brush handling. But no mortal man is without a peccadillo--our boy was always observed to be moving his jaws and chewing more candies than were good for him. The third was a staid druggist's son, sedate as his father and as particular in trifling matters; he was "awfully smart," as the phrase is, in his studies, having pursued them conscientiously; and besides, he belonged as a matter of course to the category of "good boys." I used to sleep with him in his house sometimes and study arithmetic with him.