Pass, certificate, and competitive examinations are, no doubt, all sufficiently serious affairs to examinees, and sufficiently trying ones to examiners. To the outer public, however, to those “who have no son or brother there,” such “exams.” are, as a rule, nothing if not a source of amusement. The “results” aimed at in examinations are, for the most part, admirable; but in the course of the processes, in the answering of examination questions, the unexpected constantly happens, and it is the unlooked-for results, the “surprises” of the occasions, that make sport for the Philistines. The situation on this head is easily explicable. It is a natural result of the modern system of preparation for examination—the cram system. Examinees bent only on “getting through” will answer questions on the hit-or-miss principle, while others, whose brains have become more or less addled under the pressure of “memory work,” will evolve from their unbalanced inner consciousness replies fearfully and wonderfully made.

Some of the “exam.” stories current in educational circles, though characteristic, and possibly “founded on fact,” have an air of belonging to the too-good-to-be-true category. A number of these are told against—and, if invented, were probably invented by—undergraduates. Thus—so the story goes—an undergraduate was asked to name the minor prophets, and, not having “got them up,” neatly and politely replied that he would rather not make invidious distinctions. Another university man, called upon to give the parable of the Good Samaritan, did so correctly enough until he came to the passage where the Samaritan said to the innkeeper: “When I come again I will repay thee,” to which he added, “This he said, knowing that he would see his face no more.” Perhaps, however, the examinee upon this occasion was a conscious humorist, and had in mind the worldly-wise saying, that there are a great many people willing to play the part of the Good Samaritan, less the oil and the twopence.

Something of the same stamp must have been the candidate for a degree, who, asked to state the substance of St. Paul’s sermon at Athens, said that it was “crying out for two hours, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians.’” With variations, that is the substance of a great many sermons, and of other discourses beside sermons.

Such stories as the above may or may not be rather broadly illustrative than strictly true, but in any case they can be pretty well matched by others, about the truthfulness of which there is no doubt. Every year a certain proportion of the children of the London board schools enter into a competitive examination in Scriptural knowledge, for the “Peek Prizes,” which consist of handsomely got-up Bibles and Testaments. They are “paper work” examinations, and the following are a few of the many curious “hash” answers that have at various times been put in at them.

“Abraham was the father of Lot, and ad tew wives. One was called Hishmale and tother Haggar, he kept wun at home, and he turned tother into the desert where she became a pillow of salt in the day time, and a pillow of fire by night.”

“Joseph wore a koat of many garments. He was chief butler to Faro and told is dreams. He married Potiffers dortor, and he led the Gypshans out of bondage to Kana in Gallilee, and there fell on his sword and died in sight of the promised land.”

“Moses was an Egypshion. He lived in a hark made of bulrushes, and he kept a golden calf and worshipt brazen snakes, and he het nothing but kwales and manner for forty year. He was kort by the air of his ed while riding under the bow of a tree and he was killed by his son Absolon as he was hangin from the bow. His end was pease.”

Of the numerous stories told in connection with diocesan inspection “exams.” in public elementary schools, the two following are perhaps the best known and most worth quoting. At one of these exams., a boy, asked to mention the occasion upon which it is recorded in Scripture that an animal spoke, made answer: “The whale when it swallowed Jonah.” The inspector, being something of a humorist, maintained his gravity and asked: “What did the whale say?” To which the boy promptly replied: “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” Another inspector, finding a class hesitating over answering the question, “With what weapon did Samson slay the Philistines?” and wishing to prompt them, significantly tapped his own cheek, and asked, “What is this?” and his action touching “the chords of memory,” the whole class instantly answered: “The jawbone of an ass.”

A good example of the manner in which students who are “in” for several “subjects” at the same time get their ideas mixed, is that of the youth who having to answer the question, “Who was Esau?” replied; “Esau was a man who wrote fables, and sold the copyright for a bottle of potash.” Here the confusion thrice confounded of Esau and Æsop, birthright and copyright, and pottage and potash, is really admirable in its way.

As might be expected, the examinations of medical students afford some good stories—true or otherwise. As might also be expected, some of them are wittily impudent. For instance, a “badgering” examiner asked a student what means he would employ to induce copious perspiration in a patient, and got for answer: “I’d try to make him pass an examination before you, sir.” The most frequently cited anecdote of this kind is that of the brusque examiner—said by some to have been Dr. Abernethy—who, losing patience with a student who had answered badly, exclaimed: “Perhaps, sir, you could tell me the names of the muscles I would put in action if I were to kick you?” “Undoubtedly, sir,” came the prompt reply; “you would put into motion the flexors and extensors of my arm, for I should knock you down.” On the same lines as this was the retort made to M. Lefebvre de Fourcy, a French examiner, celebrated, not only for his learning, but also for his severity and rudeness. He was examining a youth, who, though well up in his work, hesitated over answering one of the questions put to him. Losing temper at this, the examiner shouted to an attendant: “Bring a truss of hay for this young gentleman’s breakfast.” “Bring two,” coolly added the examinee, “Monsieur and I will breakfast together.” Of such alleged answers by students as that the pancreas was so named after the Midland railway station, that the bone of the upper arm (humerus) was called the humerous, and was so styled because it was known as the funny-bone; or that the ankle-bone (tarsus) was so called because St. Paul walked upon it to the city of that name—of such alleged answers as these it is charitable to suppose that they must be weak inventions of the enemy.

Many of the comicalities in the way of examination answers recorded by her Majesty’s inspectors of schools, the examiners in the school board scholarships competitions, and other the like official personages, go a long way to prove that in examination blundering, as in many other matters, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. At least, it seems to us that no invented story—supposing examination stories ever are invented—could equal for “nice derangement” the following written answer which was actually given at an examination in the “specific subjects” in a public elementary school within the metropolitan area. The specific subject taken was physiology, and the children “presented” in it were asked to “describe the processes of digestion,” which one of them did in this wise: “Food is digested by the action of the lungs. Digestion is brought on by the lungs having something the matter with them. The food then passes through your windpipe to the pores, and thus passes off your body by evaporation, through a lot of little holes in your skin called capillaries. The food is nourished in the stomach. If you were to eat anything hard you would not be able to digest it, and the consequence would be you would have indigestion. The gall-bladder throws off juice from the food which passes through it. We call the kidneys the bread-basket, because it is where all the bread goes to. They lay up concealed by the heart.”

Domestic economy, as nowadays taught to “children of the elementary school class,” embraces a good deal of physiological knowledge, or rather, as applied to such children, physiological jargon. It is a subject which affords hosts of amusing answers, though, from considerations of space, two or three must here suffice for specimens. Thus, in reply to the question, “Why do we cook our food?” one girl gives the delightfully inconsequent reply: “Their of five ways of cooking potatoes. We should die if we eat our food roar.” Another girl writes: “The function of food is to do its proper work in the body. Its proper work is to well masticate the food, and it goes through without dropping, instead of being pushed down by the skin.” A third domestic economy pupil puts in her examination paper that “food digested is when we put it into our mouths, our teeth chews it, and our tongue roll it down into our body.… We should not eat so much bone-making foods as flesh-forming and warmth-giving foods, for if we did we would have too many bones, and that would make us look funny.” On the subject of ventilation, one student informs us that a room should be kept at ninety in the winter by a fire; in the summer by a thermometer: while a classmate writes: “A thermometer is an instrument used to let out the heat when it is going to be cold.” Another girl sets down: “When roasting a piece of beef place it in front of a brisk fire, so as to congratulate the outside.” But an answer—still in domestic economy—that better, perhaps, than any of the above illustrates the jargoning that comes of the cram system, is the following: “Sugar is an amyolid, if you was to eat much sugar and not nothing else you would not live because sugar has not got no carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. Potatoes is another amyolids.”

The definitions sometimes given by children in reply to examination questioning, are, to say the least of it, original. After a reading of Gray’s “Elegy” by a fourth-standard class, the boys were asked what was meant by “fretted vaults,” and one youth replied: “The vaults in which those poor people were buried; their friends came and fretted over them.” Asked what he understood by “elegy,” another boy in the same class answered: “Elegy is some poetry wrote out for schools to learn like Gray’s ‘Elegy.’” A class of girls, who had read a passage from “Evangeline,” were told to write out the meaning of “the forge,” and these were among the answers, “A firnest in a blacksmith shop.” “A firnest in a blacksmith.” “The village smithy’s anvil.” “The dust that rises from the floor of a blacksmith’s.” A teacher, giving a reading lesson to his class in the presence of an inspector, asked the boys what was meant by conscience—a word that had occurred in the course of the reading. The class having been duly crammed for the question, answered as one boy: “An inward monitor.” “But what do you understand by an inward monitor?” put in the inspector. To this further question only one boy announced himself ready to respond, and his triumphantly given answer was, “A hironclad, sir.”

A few years back there was published, as a curiosity, in its way, the subjoined transcript from Cowper’s poem on Alexander Selkirk written (from dictation) by a fifth-standard boy at a government examination of a public elementary school: “I Ham Monac of hall I searve, there is none heare my rite to Dispute from the senter. Hall round to the sea I am lorde of the fowls to the Brute all shoshitude ware are the charms that sages have sene in thy face better Dewel in miste of a larms than in this moste horribel place. I am how of umity reach if must finish my Jurny a lone never here the swete music of speach i start at the sound of my hone the Beasts that rome over the place my form with indrifence see they are so unocent with men such tamess is shocking to me.”

The examiner for the School Board Scholarship competed for in 1882, gives the following among other equally strange answers on historical matters. “When Commonwealth comes to the throne it is called Oliver Cromwell.” “The treaty of Utrecht was fought between the Zulus and the English.” “Lord Clive captured the Fiji Islands in 1624.” “Cardinal Wolsey was a great warrior.” “Walpole translated the Bible.” “Walpole was another favorite of Henry VIII. He was the chief man in helping Henry to get a divorce.” “Chaucer wrote Æsop’s fables.” In another of these scholarship examinations Jack Cade was described as “a great Indian conqueror,” Sir Christopher Wren was set down as “a discoverer” and “an animal painter,” and Mr. Gladstone as “a great African traveler.” The battle of Crecy was stated to have been fought in the reign of George III., between the Britons and Romans, and “The Wide, Wide World” was named as Shakspere’s greatest work. This last, however, was not so bad as the history of a pupil-teacher, who informed the examiner that “Shakspere lived in the reign of George III., discovered America, and was killed by Caliban.”

A schoolboy habit of placing upon a question some literal meaning other than that intended by the examiner, often leads to answers as curious as unexpected. Thus an inspector, testing a class upon their knowledge of the succession of the kings of Israel, asked the boy to whose turn it had come to be questioned: “And who came after Solomon?” To which the youngster answered: “The Queen of Sheba, sir.” Asked what were the chief ends of man, another boy replied, “His head and feet;” and a third, questioned as to where Jacob was going when he was ten years old, replied that he was “going on for eleven.” One specially practical juvenile, called upon to say for what the Red Sea was famous, answered, “Red herrings!”

To the type of answers here in view, belongs an answer given by a boy whose father was a strong teetotaler, and upon whom it would appear home influence had made a stronger impression than school lessons. “Do you know the meaning of syntax?” he was asked. “Yes,” he answered; “sin-tax is the dooty upon spirits.” An inspector, who had been explaining to a class that the land of the world was not continuous, said to the boy who happened to be standing nearest to him: “Now, could your father walk round the world?” “No, sir,” was promptly answered. “Why not?” “Because he’s dead,” was the unlooked-for response. As little anticipated, probably, was the answer made to another inspector, who asked, “What is a hovel?” and was met with the reply: “What you live in.”

A prettily humorous examination story is that of the little Scotch boy at the Presbytery examination. He was asked: “What is the meaning of regeneration?” “To be born again,” he answered. “Quite right! Would you not like to be born again?” He hesitated, but being pressed, said that he would not, and asked why not, replied: “For fear I might be born a lassie.” Alike astonishing and amusing was an answer given by an adult examinee, who was “sitting” for a certificate as acting teacher. In the examination to test general knowledge, he was asked, “What is the age of reason?” and answered: “As many years as have elapsed since the birth of the person so named.” It was also a certificate candidate, who, in reading, rendered two lines from Goldsmith’s “Edwin and Angelina” thus:—