One of the incidents of reading is a set of examinations set by the colleges severally. They take place three times a year, at the end of each term, and are called collections--apparently from the fact that at this time certain college fees used to be collected from the students. The papers are set by the dons, and as is the case with all tutorial exercises, the results have nothing at all to do with the class a man receives in the public examinations--mods and finals. I was surprised to find that it was rather the rule to crib; and my inquiries disclosed a very characteristic state of affairs. One man, who was as honorable in all respects as most fellows, related how he had been caught cribbing. His tutor took the crib and examined it carefully. "Quite right," he said. "In fact, excellent. Don't be at any pains to conceal it. By the finals, of course, you will have to carry all these things in your head; at present, all we want to know is how well you can write an examination paper." The emphasis as to the necessity of knowing how to write was quite as genuine as the sarcasm. These examinations have a further interest to Americans. They are probably a debased survival of examinations which in centuries past were a police regulation to test a student's diligence, and thus had some such relation to a degree as our hour examinations, midyears, and finals. In other words, they suggest a future utility for our present midyears and finals, if ever a genuine honor examination is made requisite for an American honor degree. For the greater part of his course, an undergraduate's reading is by no means portentous. It was Dr. Johnson, if I am not mistaken, whose aim was "five good hours a day." At Oxford, this is the maximum which even a solid reading man requires of himself. During term time most men do much less, for here is another of the endlessly diverting Oxford paradoxes: passman and classman alike aim to do most of their reading in vacations. As usual, a kernel of common sense may be found. If the climate of England is as little favorable to a strenuous intellectual life as it is to strenuous athleticisms, the climate of Oxford is the climate of England to the _n_th power. A man's intellectual machinery works better at home in the country. And even as the necessity of relaxation is greater at Oxford, so is the chance of having fun and of making good friends--of growing used to the ways of the world of men. The months at the university are the heyday of life. The home friends and the home sports are the same yesterday and forever. The university clearly recognizes all this. It rigidly requires a man to reside at Oxford a certain definite time before graduation; but how and when he studies and is examined, it leaves to his own free choice. A man reads enough at Oxford to keep in the current of tutorial instruction, and to get on the trail of the books to be wrestled with in vacation. V THE EXAMINATION