Certainly: there was a first rate man just leaving a school a few miles away; and I gave particulars. The man was appointed at once; the school passed out of my district, and I thought no more of it. But four years later I got a letter from the Rector, full of gratitude: my nominee had effected a reformation: he had raised the Government Grant from £77 to £132, rendering unnecessary the collection of a voluntary rate. He was “good all round, in fact invaluable.” In the thirtieth year after my recommendation, when the Rector had retired, and the master had, alas! broken down, I got from the former a complete history. Not only had the grant risen to £170, “it had never looked back”: the master’s influence out of school had been equally priceless: the parish was changed. I think I earned that lunch. The humorous feature of this branch of our work was that most of it was bitterly resented by the Department. They instructed us to assist managers with advice, but the selection of good teachers and the weeding out of bad ones sadly interfered with the policy of the National Teachers’ Union, and Whitehall trembles when it sees the weakest of the N. U. T.’s. A word of farewell is due to the lady manager. There was a time when she was a prominent personage: she assisted at the inspection, and waited for hours that she might see the Inspector blundering over the “garments.” She called his attention to specially meritorious stitches, and deplored the blindness of My Lords in their selection of sewing tests: she deprecated mathematics, and urged the superior claims of housewifery. She gave private information on the characters of the pupil-teachers and the children, generally hinting that the pretty ones were undesirable. And she had the strongest views about their dress, views that the male inspector regarded with lack-lustre eye. It was not only at the inspection that she appeared: in many schools she was to be found without fail two or three days a week; possibly assisting in the needlework; possibly taking a general interest in the girls: always full of good works. Alas! her class is extinct. I think the cold disapproval shown by the professional teacher has frozen her out. Or is it that the haughty children resent intrusion? Or that the comprehensive, critical glance, which even Standard I. would cast at her dress when she entered the room, made it impossible for her to continue her visits without “making a toilette” for every visit? These are mysteries hidden from the male eye. With the passing of the Act of 1902 came the Passing of the manager, male and female. Now there is a committee; there is a correspondent; there is a caretaker; but the greatest of these is the caretaker. And with the other change came the passing of Form IX. as an amateur work. Part of it is done by the teachers, part by the local authority; the managers are free from it, and the inspector sees it no more.