ewton 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