miserable victims:

'A uniform rod' (it is a marvellous act of mercy that the examiner
invented it _uniform_; it is strange that its thickness did not vary in
some complicated manner, and become a veritable birch-rod!) 'of length
_2c_, rests in stable equilibrium' (stable! another act of leniency!),
'with its lower end at the vertex of a cycloid whose plane is vertical'
(why not incline it at an angle of 30 degrees?) 'and vertex downwards,
and passes through a small, smooth, fixed ring situated in the axis at a
distance _b_ from the vertex. Show that if the equilibrium be slightly
disturbed, the rod will perform small oscillations with its lower end on
the arc of the cycloid in the time

+---------------------
| a{c^2 + 3(b - c)^2}
4[pi]\ | ------------------- ,
\| 3g(b^2 - 4ac)

where _2a_ is the length of the axis of the cycloid.'

A sweet pretty problem, truly! And there are hundreds of the same
kind--birch-rods for every back! How the examiner must have rejoiced
when he invented this diabolical rod, with its equilibrium, its
oscillations, its cycloid, and other tormenting accessories. And yet, I
suppose, before my days of studentship are over, I shall be called upon
to attack some such impregnable fortresses of mathematics, when I hope
to be declared equal to some twentieth wrangler, if I escape the
misfortune of sharing a portion of the 'wooden spoon.'

Ah, you male sycophants! You would prevent us from competing with you;
you would separate yourselves on your island of knowledge, and sink the
punt which would bear us over to your privileged shore. Of all the
twaddle--forgive me, male sycophants!--that the world has ever heard, I
think the greatest is that which you have talked about female education.
And the best of it is, you are so anxious about our welfare; you are so
afraid that we should injure our health by overmuch mental exertion; you
profess to think that our brains are not calculated to stand the strain
of continued mental exercise; you think that competition is not good for
the female mind; that we are too competitive by nature--too ambitious!
Yes, we are so ambitious that we would enter the lists with those who
are asked in Public Examinations to find the simple interest on 1,000
pounds for 5 years at 6-1/4 per cent.; so ambitious that we would
compete with those who are requested to disclose the first aorist middle
of [Greek: tupto]. Oh, think of the menta