Here, as I said, they are the slaves of habit. It is in their speech that the unexpectedness triumphs; and the younger the child the more unexpected are his remarks. Many an inspector, many a teacher, has been reduced to utter confusion by these random shots. It was one of my own staff who came to grief in a country school in this way. He had been examining Standard II. in the multiplication table, and the village idiot was in the class. They dealt with fair success with the simpler problems, and Mr. Rackem was emboldened to soar higher. “How much is eleven twelves?” he asked, and there was none to answer. He put it in a more searching way: “_Who_ knows how much is eleven twelves?” And the village idiot answered “Gawd,” that being the generally accepted answer to difficult questions couched in that form. In another country school I met a boy, who by reason of his wit and his wits was the joy of the rector’s heart. He was in Standard III., age about nine. I gave him an arithmetic card containing, among others, the question: “How much would one million penny postage stamps cost?” George took the contract with a friendly grin, and in due time intimated that he had completed it. “What do you make of the stamps, George?” I asked: “Is it £4,166 13_s._ 4_d._? Yes: that is right,” and I marked his paper. George grinned a larger grin, and remarked confidentially, as he sat down again, “Thet come to a dale more nor what I’d care tu give far un.” When Mr. Bultitude (in _Vice Versâ_) was given bills of parcels to do, he was “disgusted as a business man by the glaring improbabilities of their details.” George took the same view. A colleague tells of a similar rebuff. He was examining in mental arithmetic, and took pains to adapt his questions to local industries. Picking out a big lad, he asked, “What does your father do?” “Cotches sawmon i’ th’ river.” “Capital: you will be able to do this sum; 20lbs. of salmon at 3_d._ a lb., what is that worth? Twen-ty pounds of sal-mon at 3_d._?” “Yah: tha’ wouldn’t be worth a dom.” I think this is what logicians would call “Ignoratio Elenchi.” Still more unexpected was the reply that demolished the present truthful chronicler in an infant school. The mistress was giving a lesson on an elephant. It was in the days when etiquette forbade that the subject of the lesson should be directly announced to the class: it had to be approached by artful devices. Therefore she began with a question: “What is the largest animal in the world?” Chorus: An elephunt, teacher. Mistress: Yes, quite right. This heresy shocked me; but etiquette again forbade that I should contradict her. Yet--for _magis amica veritas_--I might, and did, interpose a question: “Which is the bigger, an elephant or a whale?” Chorus: A wheele. The mistress looked scornfully at me, and returned the oblique shot: “Is a whale an animal, children?” Chorus: Noo, teacher. Mistress: What is a whale, children? Chorus: A fish.