Notes From the news Author:James Payn General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1890 Original Publisher: Lovell Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select f... more »rom more than a million books for free. Excerpt: NOTES FROM THE 'NEWS; In all middle-class households, where there are boys, the subject which to-day is spoken of above all others is what they call for short -- but certainly neither for Move' nor for 'euphony' -- tlieir 'exams.' The youth of England are perpetually going in for competitive examinations, and getting 'plucked,' or 'spun' or 'floored'; and, as there are generally about a hundred candidates to ten vacancies, this is not much to be wondered at. In the old days at sea, the last man up the rigging, and the last man down on the deck, was always flogged to encourage the rest to activity. It was urged by the few humanitarians who existed at that epoch that, since somebody must be last, the punishment was rather unfair; but, after all, there were only two sufferers; in the case of each'exam.' there are ninety. For my part, I feel for these poor lads immensely. I can, of course, do nothing for them , but the following incident -- though taken from the records of crime -- cannot fail to give them at least a momentary satisfaction. It is a curious account enough of how, when competitive examinations first began, an examiner himself was 'floored' instead of the candidate. In 1837, Mr. Charles Wadham Wyndham Penrud- dock went up to Apothecaries' Hall for his professional ordeal. His strong point was anatomy, yet his four examiners would contiiie their questions to chemistry and other matters whereof he knew much less, which must, no doubt, have been very annoying to him. One -- Mr. Hardy -- was especially severe upon him about therapeutics. ' Patience is a good nag, but...« less