Counsel: Pray, how old are you, madam? Witness: Well, if you _must_ know, I was born in the year ’64. Counsel (blandly): A.D. or B.C.? Once a manager came to me during the inspection and asked to have Form IX. back for a minute. I produced it, and he explained: “Old Miss Grey, when she brings me the Form, always asks to have it back again, before you come, so that she may run her eye over it. Then I look at it, and I always find that she has left a blank for her ‘date of birth.’ She gets it back from me, fills in the date, and gives you the Form: then I get it back again to see how she is getting on, and very slow progress she makes.” “‘Character of the late master?’ How very awkward: after the last report, you know, we really were obliged to make a change, and people do say he was not quite--he seemed at times a little--what can I put there?” “‘Present address of the late mistress’--and she died last November. Eh?” It was not always possible to go into these details: there might be a train to catch: and then, if anything went wrong, the manager would lay the blame on the broad back of the Inspector. “I had Form IX. returned to me last year,” said a south-country incumbent to me: “I think Pluckham, our Inspector--do you know Pluckham?--might have corrected it for me: I gave the fellow lunch, don’t you know.” I assured him that there was no reciprocal obligation in the matter of lunch. These were comparatively simple questions. But the accounts were appalling; and they had to be audited. Till recent years this was not much of an ordeal, for an amateur auditor was easily satisfied. I myself was witness of an audit when a treasurer presented his accounts to a friendly banker for his certificate. The skilled accountant added up the figures, and pronounced the result very good. “Now,” he asked, “what have I to certify: ‘That I have compared this balance sheet with the _accounts_, and with the _registers_’? Where are the registers?” and he seized the vouchers, and ran through them: then he signed the certificate. The school was not in my district, and I was not bound to remark that a register of school attendance is not the same as a receipted account. In the late ’nineties a professional auditor was required, and after some experience I concluded that compound addition and subtraction are no part of an auditor’s education. But the process inspired confidence in the public mind. When ladies and other simple souls undertook the office of treasurer, there was a chance of trouble. Two instances occur to me.