To me this is cloudy, but I was never well up in geometry. That was the only effort made among the five students who appeared for examination in geometry; the other four wailed and surrendered without a fight. They are piteous wails, too, wails of despair; and one of them is an eloquent reproach; it comes from a poor fellow who has been laden beyond his strength by a stupid teacher, and is eloquent in spite of the poverty of its English. The poor chap finds himself required to explain riddles which even Sir Isaac Newton was not able to understand:
"50. Oh my dear father examiner you my father and you kindly give a number of pass you my great father.
"51. I am a poor boy and have no means to support my mother and two brothers who are suffering much for want of food. I get four rupees monthly from charity fund of this place, from which I send two rupees for their support, and keep two for my own support. Father, if I relate the unlucky circumstance under which we are placed, then, I think, you will not be able to suppress the tender tear.
"52. Sir which Sir Isaac Newton and other experienced mathematicians cannot understand I being third of Entrance Class can understand these which is too impossible to imagine. And my examiner also has put very tiresome and very heavy propositions to prove."We must remember that these pupils had to do their thinking in one language, and express themselves in another and alien one. It was a heavy handicap. I have by me "English as She is Taught"--a collection of American examinations made in the public schools of Brooklyn by one of the teachers, Miss Caroline B. Le Row. An extract or two from its pages will show that when the American pupil is using but one language, and that one his own, his performance is no whit better than his Indian brother's:
"ON HISTORY.
"Christopher Columbus was called the father of his Country. Queen Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that Columbus could discover America.
"The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.
"The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then scalping them.
"Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life was saved by his daughter Pochahantas.
"The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.
"The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be null and void.
"Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken to the cathedral in Havana.
"Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas."In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he doesn't know anything, they put him into literature, or geometry, or astronomy, or government, or something like that, so that he can properly display the assification of the whole system "ON LITERATURE.
"'Bracebridge Hall' was written by Henry Irving.
"Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.
"Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.
"Ben Johnson survived Shakespeare in some respects.
"In the 'Canterbury Tale' it gives account of King Alfred on his way to the shrine of Thomas Bucket.
"Chaucer was the father of English pottery.
"Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow."We will finish with a couple of samples of "literature," one from America, the other from India. The first is a Brooklyn public-school boy's attempt to turn a few verses of the "Lady of the Lake" into prose.
You will have to concede that he did it:
"The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with weariness, while every breath for labor lie drew with cries full of sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight."The following paragraph is from a little book which is famous in India-the biography of a distinguished Hindoo judge, Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee; it was written by his nephew, and is unintentionally funny-in fact, exceedingly so. I offer here the closing scene. If you would like to sample the rest of the book, it can be had by applying to the publishers, Messrs. Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta "And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips not to open them again. All the well-known doctors of Calcutta that could be procured for a man of his position and wealth were brought,--Doctors Payne, Fayrer, and Nilmadhub Mookerjee and others; they did what they could do, with their puissance and knack of medical knowledge, but it proved after all as if to milk the ram! His wife and children had not the mournful consolation to hear his last words; he remained sotto voce for a few hours, and then was taken from us at 6.12 P.m. according to the caprice of God which passeth understanding."
