use-cat, bursting into tears."

And so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. I always notice
stage directions, because they fret me and keep me trying to get out
of their way, just as the automobiles do. At first; then by and by they
become monotonous and I get run over.

Mr. Howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful
as the make of it. I have held him in admiration and affection so many
years that I know by the number of those years that he is old now;
but his heart isn't, nor his pen; and years do not count. Let him have
plenty of them; there is profit in them for us.

ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT

In the appendix to Croker's Boswell's Johnson one finds this anecdote:

CATO'S SOLILOQUY.--One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to
him (Dr. Samuel Johnson) Cato's Soliloquy, which she went through very
correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the child:

"What was to bring Cato to an end?"

She said it was a knife.

"No, my dear, it was not so."

"My aunt Polly said it was a knife."

"Why, Aunt Polly's knife MAY DO, but it was a DAGGER, my dear."

He then asked her the meaning of "bane and antidote," which she was
unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said:

"You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words."

He then said:

"My dear, how many pence are there in SIXPENCE?"

"I cannot tell, sir," was the half-terrified reply.

On this, addressing himself to Mrs. Gastrel, he said:

"Now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a
child Cato's Soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are in a
sixpence?"

In a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society Professor Ravenstein
quoted the following list of frantic questions, and said that they had
been asked in an examination:

Mention all names of places in the world derived from Julius Caesar or
Augustus Caesar.

Where are the following rivers: Pisuerga, Sakaria, Guadalete, Jalon,
Mulde?

All you know of the following: Machacha, Pilmo, Schebulos, Crivoscia,
Basces, Mancikert, Taxhem, Citeaux, Meloria, Zutphen.

The highest peaks of the Karakorum range.

The number of universities in Prussia.

Why are the tops of mountains continually covered with snow (sic)?

Name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which issued from the
Skaptar Jokul in the eruption of 1783.

That list would oversize nearly anybody's geographical knowledge. Isn't
it reasonably p