ation days coming along spurred me on."

Those examination days! How amazed, almost amused, our child friends are
when we, of whose school-days they were such large and impressive
milestones, describe them! A short time ago I was visiting an old
schoolmate of mine. "Tell me what school was like when you and mother
went," her little girl of ten besought me.

So I told her. I dwelt upon those aspects of it differing most from
school as she knows it--the "Scholarship Medal," the "Prize for Bible
History," and the other awards, the bestowal of which made "Commencement
Morning" of each year a festival unequaled, to the pupils of "our"
school, by any university commencement in the land, however many and
brilliant the number of its recipients of "honorary degrees." I touched
upon the ease with which even the least remarkable pupil in that school
could repeat the Declaration of Independence and recount the "causes" of
the French Revolution. Finally, I mentioned our examination days--six in
January, six more in June.

"What did you do on them?" inquired the little girl.

"Will you listen to that?" demanded her mother. "Ten years old--and she
asks what we did on examination days! This is what it means to belong to
the rising generation--not to know, at ten, anything about examination
days!"

"What _did_ you do on them?" the little girl persisted.

"We had examinations," I explained. "All our books were taken away, and
we were given paper and pen and ink--"

"And three hours for each examination," my friend broke in. "We had one
in the morning and another in the afternoon."

"Yes," I went on. "One morning we would have a grammar examination.
Twenty questions would be written on the blackboard by our teacher, and
we would write the answers--in three hours. On another morning, or on
the afternoon of that same day, we might have an arithmetic examination.
There would be twenty questions, and three hours to answer them in, just
the same."

"Do you understand, dear?" said the little girl's mother. "Well, well,"
she went on, turning to me before the child could reply, "how this talk
brings examination days back to my remembrance! What excitement there
was! And how we worked getting ready for them! I really think it was a
matter of pride with us to be so tired after our last examination of the
week that we had to go to bed and dine on milk toast and a soft-boiled
egg!"

The little girl was looking at us with round eyes.

"D