37. LUCKY ANSWER
[Certainly Thompson would be a lawyer, ready for any emergency.]
In times past there was in a certain law school an aged and eccentric professor. "General information" was the old gentleman's hobby. He held it as incontrovertible that if a young lawyer possessed a large fund of miscellaneous knowledge, combined with an equal amount of common sense, he would be successful in life. So every year the professor put on his examination papers a question very far removed from the subject of criminal law. One year it was, "How many kinds of trees are there in the college yard?" the next, "What is the make-up of the present English cabinet?"
Finally the professor thought he had invented the best question of his life. It was, "Name twelve animals that inhabit the polar regions." The professor chuckled as he wrote this down. He was sure he would "pluck" half the students on that question and it was beyond a doubt that that opprobrious young loafer Thompson would fail. But when the professor read the examination papers, Thompson, who had not answered another question, was the only man who had solved the polar problem. This was Thompson's answer: "Six seals and six polar bears." Thompson got his degree with distinction.