Another pig story was given by several competitors, connected with the siege of Rennes in Brittany by the English about the middle of the fourteenth century. In this case a pig was used to decoy into the besieged town, that they might serve as food for the famished inhabitants, a large herd of swine, regarding which the English foe had quite other intentions.
12. How fast can an expert penman write?
Many good answers were given to this question, the best being those in which girls, not satisfied with information derived from books, showed they had experimented for themselves. “I wrote the so-many words of this answer in so-long,” was a reply of the right sort, especially when the handwriting looked like that of an expert, and the rest of the information like that of a girl of sense. Forty words a minute seemed to be considered a good pace, but it could not be kept up for long. A great deal of dexterity, not to say perseverance, would be needed to write by the hour at a faster rate than about twenty-six words in a minute. It is different, of course, with shorthand, by means of which expert writers can write legibly as fast as anyone can speak.
13. When did the pianoforte first come into use?
The number who did not attempt answering this question was so small as to be not worth speaking about. Girls found out that, whilst the subject was a little obscure, it was generally agreed that Bartolommeo Cristofori, a harpsichord maker of Padua, was the man of genius who invented and produced the pianoforte in the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was not, however, until the present century began that the use of the instrument became at all general.
14. What is the most polite nation in the world?
Almost everybody had something to say on this question, to which many answers were possible, depending on what one thought true politeness. Most gave the first place to the French, whilst a few named the Italians and the Spanish. Of people farther a-field the Chinese and the Japanese got the preference with some, especially the Japanese. There were reasons given for the choice in many instances, and some philosophy was occasionally thrown in, as when a girl added a good word for the comparatively blunt and unpolished ways of John Bull: “A rough exterior with a true heart beneath it,” she says, “being better than a veneer of politeness without any depth.”
15. What is the nearest star to the earth?
This is the sun, regarding which we may quote from Mr. J. Norman Lockyer. “The sun is a star, bigger and brighter than the other stars, not because it is unlike them but simply because it is so near us.” A good many gave what was equivalent to this answer but more did not. There was a confusion too in some minds between stars, planets, and satellites, which led competitors into mistakes that would have otherwise been avoided. But let not those who went outside our solar system and said Alpha Centauri concern themselves; it was, in its way, a good answer, though the distance of α Centauri exceeds our sun’s distance 230,000 times!
16. What philosopher of antiquity married a shrew?