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 knowledge!
If one could have set aside one’s own interest in the contest, the scene in that long low room of the Polite Letter Writer Commissioners was amusing enough.
You should only have watched the anxious glances we bent around on each other, after first scanning over the printed lists supplied to puzzle us! How we cordially sympathised with the hopeless vacant stare of ignorance, proceeding from some tall, bearded individual, well on in his twenties—who looked far more fit to shoulder a musket and go to the wars, like our French friend, “Malbrook,” than to be thus condemned again to school-boy duties! How we glared, also, at any brilliant competitor, whose down-bent head seemed too intent on mastering the subject set before him; and, whose ready pen appeared to be travelling over paper at far too expeditious a rate for our chances of winning the clerkly race! With what horror and despair, we confronted a “poser” that was placed to catch us napping:—how we jumped at anything easy!
Taking note of the examiner’s watchfulness; the hushed silence that reigned around, only broken by the scribbling sound of busy workers and the listless shuffling of the feet of others, who, having, as they sanguinely thought, completely mastered their tasks, had nothing further to occupy their time until “the gaudy pageant” should be “o’er”—the whole thing, really, was school all over again!
I believed, every moment, that I was back again once more in the well-remembered “B” schoolroom at Queen’s—where and when Old Jack, promenading all in his glory, caused me often to “tremble for fear of his frown,” like that “Sweet Alice,” whom Ben Bolt loved and basely deserted.