Also one is very likely to get strange answers if the question soars above the children’s comprehension. In another school the children were reading from their own school-books a great speech by John Bright, in which occurred the mystic words, “Urim and Thummim.” I asked the meaning, and the Rector, an eminent scholar and divine, whispered that he didn’t know: to which I replied with the same secrecy, that I didn’t know, but that as the words came in the school-book, the children were bound to have a theory. They supplied two: (1) “When a man hev a lot of property left un:” (2) “When the postman come to the door.” The interpretation would have baffled Daniel, but the Rector suggested that “thumping” was the clue: thumping legacy, thumping at the door.
It was a similar sudden strain that produced from a Norfolk child the definition of a philosopher: “a little thing with two wheels what you ride about on.” Velocipedes were more common than philosophers in those days.
But the safest path to comedy was to ask a thoroughly silly question, and to get answered according to one’s folly. It was, I remember, in what I may call the “Urim and Thummim” school, that while I was examining the children, the Rector was revising a heap of divinity examination papers from the training colleges. I heard a sudden guffaw, and begged that I might have the joke, while it was still warm. The question was, “What do we know of the antecedents of the man at the Pool of Bethesda?” And the appropriate answer was, “It is clear that his antecedents either were dead, or had grossly neglected him.”
Fool meets fool. But this rash style of question is more common in oral examinations, and as one learns wisdom, comedy decreases. Twice a year, however, our work changed, and a great mass of examination papers poured in from the training colleges and other centres. The various subjects were allotted, as a rule, according to our previously declared wishes, and I took Geography, or History, with an occasional lapse into English Grammar and Literature. Year after year I used to jot down on an old atlas, or on the blank pages of a cheap history manual, as the case might be, the best jokes of the batch, and the accumulated treasures lie before me.
For the information of the outside world it must be premised, that most of the candidates prepared for the examination in Geography and History by learning by heart wretched text-books put into their hands by their head-teachers. When the examination paper was laid before them, they at once wrote down such paragraphs or pages as seemed to meet the emergency.
“But though they wrote them all by rote,
They could not write them right,”
as the admirable Cambridge bard sang. Moreover, having from long experience unbounded confidence in the leniency of H.M.I., they had no doubt that “their acts would receive the most favourable construction”; and if they could not remember the right page, they offered another very nice article, much superior to the one asked for; as if it were a patent pill; and they expected equal treatment for the changeling. An account of Richard II. might be out of stock, or at least they could not lay their hands on it: but surely an examiner would give some marks for a biography of Richard III., with special reference to the murder of the little Princes. A map of Africa (our own brand) was surely as good as the demanded map of S. America: and if the man who asked for a list of the exports of British India were not satisfied with a highly imaginative list of the imports, at least he would not take off any marks from the other questions.
This is the only explanation of the two following answers.[38] It will be seen that the former excels in ignorance, the latter in irrelevance:
(1) Q. Give a short account of the way in which Great Britain became the chief power in N. America from 1607 to 1763.
A. Queen Elizabeth was reigning in the year 1607. She ruled for a long time, and was a very prosperous queen. Leicester was her favourite for a long time, she was a very changable women, and no one remained in her favour for a very long time. It was in her reign that the war started in N. America. After Q. Elizabeth came her sister Queen Anne and William Prince of Orange. Anne reigned with William six years. After her death William reigned for 7 years. He called his parliament and got together a lot of money with which he again renewed the war in N. America in which he was very successful. George III. was the next to reign being the grandson of Q. Elizabeth. He continued the war that Elizabeth had begun and kept the war on till he had conquered the whole of N. America.