In another country school I met a boy, who by reason of his wit and his wits was the joy of the rector’s heart. He was in Standard III., age about nine. I gave him an arithmetic card containing, among others, the question: “How much would one million penny postage stamps cost?” George took the contract with a friendly grin, and in due time intimated that he had completed it.
“What do you make of the stamps, George?” I asked: “Is it £4,166 13s. 4d.? Yes: that is right,” and I marked his paper.
George grinned a larger grin, and remarked confidentially, as he sat down again, “Thet come to a dale more nor what I’d care tu give far un.”
When Mr. Bultitude (in Vice Versâ) was given bills of parcels to do, he was “disgusted as a business man by the glaring improbabilities of their details.” George took the same view.
A colleague tells of a similar rebuff. He was examining in mental arithmetic, and took pains to adapt his questions to local industries. Picking out a big lad, he asked, “What does your father do?”
“Cotches sawmon i’ th’ river.”
“Capital: you will be able to do this sum; 20lbs. of salmon at 3d. a lb., what is that worth? Twen-ty pounds of sal-mon at 3d.?”
“Yah: tha’ wouldn’t be worth a dom.”
I think this is what logicians would call “Ignoratio Elenchi.”
Still more unexpected was the reply that demolished the present truthful chronicler in an infant school. The mistress was giving a lesson on an elephant. It was in the days when etiquette forbade that the subject of the lesson should be directly announced to the class: it had to be approached by artful devices. Therefore she began with a question: “What is the largest animal in the world?”