r a
little. Then a boy, who evidently had been ruminating, responded
nonchalantly, "A gutsy brute, sir."

In examining the boys in the composition of sentences, a master began:
"If I ask you," said he, "what have I in my hand? you must not say
simply 'Chalk,' but make a full sentence of it, and say, 'You have chalk
in your hand.' Now I will proceed. What have I on my feet?" The answer
came immediately, "Boots." "Wrong; you haven't been observing my
directions," he rebukingly replied. "Stockings," another heedlessly
ventured to answer. "Wrong again--worse than ever," wrathfully exclaimed
the _magister_. "Well?" he continued interrogatively to a lad near him.
"Please, sir," then he paused--perhaps he thought it _might_ sound
funny, but he felt it _must_ be right, and so he recklessly gasped
out--"Corns!"

But the answers are not always so stupid.

"Why is it," asked a teacher, "the sun never sets on the British
possessions?" "Because," slowly responded an ingenuous youngster, "the
British possessions are in the north, south, and east, and the sun
always sets in the west."

During a recent School Board examination in the west of Scotland, the
examiner asked a little girl to explain what was meant by the
expression, _He was amply rewarded._ "Paid for't," was her instant
reply. "No, no; you are wrong. Suppose you have to go into a baker's
shop and buy a half-quarter loaf, and lay down fourpence, would you say
you had amply rewarded the baker?" Unhesitatingly she replied "Yes."
"Why?" "Because the loaf's only twopence-three-farthings," was the
unlooked-for answer.

Quite like that is the story of a small boy into whose head a teacher
was one day labouring almost in vain to get, as he thought, even the
faintest correct notion of the first rule in arithmetic. "Look here now,
Johnnie," he said at length, "if I were to give you two rabbits and your
father were to give you three rabbits, how many rabbits would you then
have?" "Six." "No, no;" and the teacher set out bits of chalk to show
how he could only have five. "Ah, but," drawled out Johnnie, "I have a
rabbit at hame already."

It was a notion of multiplication that another teacher was endeavouring
to get properly lodged within the skull of another boy, and by way of
putting the effort to a practical test, he said: "Now, Peter, suppose I
was a tailor who supplied your father with a suit of clothes for three
pounds, which he promised to pay me in weekly instalments of