When the Israelites had gone God told Noah to go out into the city and tell all the Israelites that if King Pharoah did not let the people go he would drown the world. And it came to pass, when God did drown the world, and all the beasts and every living creature in it. During the flood God told Noah to build an ark and it was to float on top of the water. In it save Noah and his family and with the two tables of stone: &c., &c. FOOTNOTES: [38] In all cases except those marked with an asterisk, the answers are copied _verbatim et literatim_ from the originals: in most cases I have the name of the writer, or of the school, or centre of examination. The starred answers are supplied by colleagues, and may be considered authentic. And in all cases the Spelling, the Grammar, and the Punctuation are original. “For Heaven’s sake, reader, take them not for mine.” CHAPTER XXIII REPORTS “All my reports go with the modest truth, Nor more, nor clipp’d, but so.”--_King Lear._ The annual inspection of a school ended in a Report. When the papers had been marked, and the Examination Schedules had been made up, it was time to search one’s note-book, and to rack the memory for facts, and therefrom to construct a report to Their Lordships, to be communicated to the managers, and by them to the teachers. In the earlier days of inspection this was a comparatively simple affair: the really important matter was the number of children who had passed or failed in the examination. Upon this, unless there was conspicuous weakness, the greater part of the grant depended, and it was easy to fill up the forms with commonplace criticisms and suggestions. From 1876 to the middle of the ’nineties the pressure increased, until at last reporting became a serious strain on memory, judgment, and conscience; for there was a variable grant for half a dozen subjects, culminating in a variable grant for the general “merit” of the whole school: and each item required some thought. New code after new code relaxed the strain, until inspection arrived at the present effete condition, when the grant is fixed, and the criticisms of H.M.I. are like the bite of a midge; annoying for the moment, but transitory in effect. Or, as my old headmaster would have said, “like the coruscations of the summer lightning, lambent, but yet innocuous.” From one corner of my old domain comes a mimic blue-book, containing all the school reports for the past year. Here they are collected; and I look at them with some dismay. Of course I did not write all of them, but I edited all, and I am answerable for all. Some are strongly worded, for, if one does not shout pretty loud to a deaf man, one is not heard. Yet one does not want one’s shouts phonographed. How do the managers and teachers like the reports in print, scattered broadcast?