eye.

At regular intervals along the green-baize tables were deposited small parcels of stationery, consisting of a large sheet of sanguinary blotting-paper, a quire or so of foolscap, a piece of indiarubber, an attenuated lead-pencil, a dozen of quill pens, with others of Gillott’s or Mitchell’s manufacture, and an ink bottle—the whole putting one in mind of those penny packets of writing requisites that itinerant pedlars, mostly seedy-looking individuals who “have seen better days,” pester one’s private house with in London; and which they are so anxious to dispose of, that they exhibit the greatest trust in your integrity, leaving their wares unsolicited behind them, and intimating that they will “call again for an answer.”

The present parcels were also “left for answers”—answers on which depended our future prospects and position!

Seated in state, on a sort of daïs in the centre of the room, was a courteous and urbane personage of affable exterior. He was further hedged in with a species of outwork of the sentry-box formation, which concealed his lower limbs from view:—a precaution evidently designed to protect him from the fierce onslaught of some demented candidate—who, when suffering from the continuous effect of “examination on the brain,” might have been suddenly goaded to frenzy by a string of unsolvable questions.

This gentleman entreated us, as a first step, to “stand by” the forms—like a crew of sailors about to make sail; and then, in the words of the Unjust Steward, to “sit down and write quickly,” each in front of one of the little piles of stationery.

We obeyed this injunction as well as we were able, although many of us, unaccustomed to rapid penmanship, found the latter part of the order rather difficult of accomplishment. It was all very well to say, “Sit down and write quickly!” but, what, if we had nothing to say, and didn’t know how to say it?

Ah!

Under the tutelage of the superintending chief, lesser satellites ministering occasionally to our wants in the matter of pens and paper, and distributing fresh series of questions to us every hour or so, we were for three days put through the paces of what the examiners held to be “the requirements of a sound liberal English education”—I, certainly, should, however, have thought but “small potatoes,” as the Americans say, of the general attainments of the lot of us in this respect, if all we possessed were tested on the occasion, or even a tithe of our 

 Prev. P 33/132 next