On receipt of this letter I felt ashamed of never having once been to see the man to whom alone I was indebted for passing into the Academy. I accepted the invitation, and on Saturday afternoon found myself sitting in Mr Rouse’s drawing-room, chatting with him a sort of shoppy conversation about examinations, marks, cramming, etc.
Mr Rouse was a man who never disappointed me. Whenever I met him, as I did often in afterlife, he invariably showed himself a genius. He was one of those sound thinkers and careful reasoners who are the real discoverers of truths, and who in almost every case remain unknown and unhonoured by the world; whilst superficial men, merely veneered with science by their contact with him, would chatter in learned societies, and be reported in newspapers, and bowed down to as authorities by the ignorant, who could not tell the electro-plated from the real metal.
Even when I was a student at Rouse’s he used to amuse us by reading out from the papers descriptions of various matters supposed to be scientifically written; he would then criticise these and show us that the writer was evidently unacquainted with his subject, and had written it at so much per line.
I was glad to find what an interest he had taken in my career at the Academy; he had noted exactly how I had done at all my examinations, and he said he was very nearly writing to me daring my third half-year to come and work with him occasionally, as he feared I might not pass the probationary examination.
During the evening he put me up to what he called useful dodges in connexion with working various branches of higher mathematics, and I found my evening not only interesting, but profitable, as I made several notes which I could think over and which would be useful to me at my final examination. He gave me also great encouragement about the future, and said that he believed the time would come when the officers of both the Engineers and Artillery would take a higher position in the scientific and literary world than they then did. “You have a capital preparatory course at Woolwich,” he remarked, “and when you get your commission you could build on this. It has often struck me that it is odd how few officers of either Artillery or Engineers have ever made a mark in the world out of their profession, or have come out as leaders in science, and this in the future is sure to be remedied.”
Mr Rouse was right at the time, but since those days a change has occurred, the two corps having produced several men distinguished in subjects not strictly professional.
I returned to the Academy with a feeling of “wound-upness,” and occupied myself in thinking about my coming examination. From being very sickly as a boy (due I believe entirely to the physicking of my aunt), I had become strong and particularly healthy, and found I could stand both mental and bodily work without feeling either much. I took care, however, to follow Mr Rouse’s advice, viz, to work my body by exercise after I had worked my brain, and to get as much fresh air as possible after a long bout of “swatting.” I never attempted to learn anything when I felt tired, and never forced myself to work; by these means I felt certain I got more knowledge into my head than I should have done had I followed the same plan that several cadets followed of working nearly all night with wet cloths round their heads and a dozen books before them.
It was impossible to avoid being anxious about the examination, but I endeavoured to follow my old plan of not driving off everything to the last, and then trying to catch up time by working night and day. I had a sort of idea that the mind was like one’s digestion in some respects, and the way to treat it was to treat it reasonably, and not to expect it to digest in a week as much mental food as it ought to have in three months. Some cadets did adopt this plan, and they generally failed, and not unusually knocked themselves up.
The first day of the examination commenced, and I found the first paper contained what we should term some very dodgy questions both in mechanics and trigonometry. I saw through the catches, and brought out neat answers, which made me tolerably confident they were correct.
Our examinations took nine days altogether, and then day after day the results came out, and we added our marks together, speculating how the next list of marks would alter our relative positions. Until the drawing and mathematical marks came out, I stood twelfth of the batch, but having obtained within one mark of the full amount in drawing, and being second in mathematics, I made up a total that made me third of the batch, which consisted of twenty-five qualified for commissions, or at least for the practical class, which was to all intents the same thing as qualifying for commission.