Many, undoubtedly, devoted this interval steadily to recruiting the wants of the inner man; but, one could well fancy them bursting off madly into some boyish game, with all the ardour that their previous application may have generated--the shouts of the Westminster scholars in the adjacent yard bearing out the illusion. _I_ spent my play-hour in wandering through the classic shades of the Abbey next door, looking over the memorial tablets of "sculptured brass and monumental marble," erected to the honour of departed worthies:--I wished, you know, to keep my mind in a properly reflective state for the afternoon hours of examination--history and other abstruse studies being usually then set. A few mad, hair-brained youths, however, I was sorry to observe, beguiled the interregnum with billiards and beer; but, these, I'm delighted to add, got handsomely plucked for their pains--as they richly deserved. You and I, you know, never drink beer or play billiards. Oh, dear no! Never, on my word! As all things must come to an end at some time or other, the examination proved no exception to the rule, duly dragging its weary length along until it came to a dead stop. A week afterwards I learnt my fate. I had not passed with the "eclat" my tutor prophesied; but, I contrived to get numbered amongst those fortunate six who secured their appointments out of the entire sixty that competed. I only got through "by the skin of my teeth," the crammer said; still, that was quite sufficient for me. I had, therefore, you see, no cause of quarrel with the examining board. They had, it is true, made me out to have only barely come up to the required standard in French--a language with which I had been familiar from childhood; but, they compensated for this, by according me full marks in book-keeping--which I had been totally ignorant of a week before the examination; and, I only answered the questions asked me therein through dint of the wholesale theoretical cramming of my tutor! So much for the value of the ordeal. I maintain that, in many instances, these competitive examinations are quite uncalled-for, and a great mistake. In the one I was engaged in, for example, two-thirds of the candidates were men who had already been employed in the public service as "writers"--some for years. Now, if these were held competent to fulfil the duties of office life, as they must have been, or they would not be thus employed, surely, it was unnecessary, as well as unfair and absurd, to subject them to test the school-boy acquirements, that many had forgotten, which offered no real proof of their aptitude to be public accountants. And, secondly, I firmly believe that competition neither produces the best clerks--out of those who thus initiate their official life, and who might not have been engaged beforehand, as writers or otherwise; nor does the system, as I've already said, afford any guarantee for a sound education on the part of those examined.