"Oh, yes, he is perfectly well!" my friend exclaimed. "But he is being disciplined--" "Disciplined?" I said. "Has he been so insubordinate as that in school?" "Not in school," the boy's mother said; "at home." Then, seeing my bewilderment, she elucidated. "When he is _very_ naughty at home, I keep him out of school. It punishes him more than anything else, because he loves to go to school." Another aspect of the subject presented itself to my mind. "I should think he would fall behind in his studies," I commented. "Oh, no," she replied; "he doesn't. Children don't fall behind in their studies in these days," she added. "They don't get a chance. Every single lesson they miss their teachers require them to 'make up.' When my boy is absent for a day, or even for only half a day, his teacher sees that he 'makes up' the lessons lost before the end of the week. When I was a child, and happened to be absent, no teacher troubled about _my_ lost lessons! _I_ did all the troubling! I laboriously 'made them up'; the thought of examination days coming along spurred me on." Those examination days! How amazed, almost amused, our child friends are when we, of whose school-days they were such large and impressive milestones, describe them! A short time ago I was visiting an old schoolmate of mine. "Tell me what school was like when you and mother went," her little girl of ten besought me. So I told her. I dwelt upon those aspects of it differing most from school as she knows it--the "Scholarship Medal," the "Prize for Bible History," and the other awards, the bestowal of which made "Commencement Morning" of each year a festival unequaled, to the pupils of "our" school, by any university commencement in the land, however many and brilliant the number of its recipients of "honorary degrees." I touched upon the ease with which even the least remarkable pupil in that school could repeat the Declaration of Independence and recount the "causes" of the French Revolution. Finally, I mentioned our examination days--six in January, six more in June. "What did you do on them?" inquired the little girl. "Will you listen to that?" demanded her mother. "Ten years old--and she asks what we did on examination days! This is what it means to belong to the rising generation--not to know, at ten, anything about examination days!" "What _did_ you do on them?" the little girl persisted. "We had examinations," I explained. "All our books were taken away, and we were given paper and pen and ink--" "And three hours for each examination," my friend broke in. "We had one in the morning and another in the afternoon."