None but very quiet people are fit to take care
of them, for a loud noise would kill them. Gold and silver fish also
cannot bear much noise.
In every large house in China there is a room called the Hall of
Ancestors. There the family worship their dead parents and grand-parents,
and great-grand-parents, and those who lived still further back. There
are no images to be seen in the Hall of Ancestors, but there are tablets
with names written upon them. The family bow down before the tablets, and
burn incense and gold paper! What a foolish service! What good can
incense and paper do to the dead? And what good can the dead do to their
children? How is it that such clever people as the Chinese are so
foolish?
RELIGION.--You have heard already that the Chinese worship the dead.
Who taught them this worship?
It was a man named Confucius, who lived a long while ago. This Confucius
was a very wise man. From his childhood he was very fond of sitting alone
thinking, instead of playing with other children. When he was fourteen he
began to read some old books that had been written not long after the
time of Noah. In these books he found very many wise sentences, such as
Noah may have taught his children. The Chinese had left off reading these
wise books, and were growing more and more foolish.[6] Confucius, when he
was grown up, tried to persuade his countrymen to attend to the old
books. There were a few men who became his scholars, and who followed him
about from place to place.
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