Arguing these points with yourself takes up quite a bit of time and you
get so out of patience with the man that made up the examination that
you lose all heart in it.
Then come some pictures about which I am frankly in the dark. There is a
Ford car with a rather funny-looking mud-guard, but who can pick out any
one feature of a Ford and say that it is wrong? It may look wrong but
I'll bet that the car in this picture as it stands could pass many a big
car on a hill.
Then there is a boy holding a bat, and while his position isn't all that
a coach could ask, the only radically wrong thing that I can detect
about the picture is that he is evidently playing baseball in a clean
white shirt with a necktie and a rather natty cap set perfectly straight
on his head. It is true he has his right thumb laid along the edge of
the bat, but maybe he likes to bunt that way. There is something in the
picture that I don't get, I am afraid, just as there is in the picture
of two men playing golf. One is about to putt. Aside from the fact that
his putter seems just a trifle long, I should have to give up my guess
and take my defeat like a man.
But I do refuse to concede anything on Picture No. 22. Here a baby is
shown sitting on the floor. He appears to be about a year and a half
old. Incidentally, he is a very plain baby. Strewn about him on the
floor are the toys that he has been playing with. There are a ball, a
rattle, a ring, a doll, a bell and a pair of roller-skates. Evidently,
the candidate is supposed to be aghast at the roller-skates in the
possession of such a small child.
The man who drew that picture had evidently never furnished playthings
for a small child. I can imagine nothing that would delight a child of a
year and a half more than a pair of roller-skates to chew and spin and
hit himself in the face with. They could also be dropped on Daddy when
Daddy was lying on the floor in an attempt to be sociable. Of all the
toys arranged before the child, the roller-skates are the most logical.
I suppose that the author of this test would insist on calling a picture
wrong which showed a baby with a safety-razor in his hand or an
overshoe on his head, and yet a photograph of the Public Library could
not be more true to life.
That is my great trouble in taking tests and examinations of any kind. I
always want to argue with the examiner, because the examiner is always
so obviously wrong.
LXII
THE BROW-ELEVATION IN HUMOR
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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