Excerpt from 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 nei ther for 'love' nor for 'euphony'-their '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 ahundred 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.