But as a general rule, and one that is happily gaining ground every year, you will find that your examiners will far prefer to discover in you the evidences of a functionally active, if somewhat lightly stored, mind than a kind of _paté de foie gras_, fattened up for the occasion, but too inert, as a result, to leave him quite happy about its future. And that's why it's always a good thing to take life easily during the last week before your papers have to be written. Go abroad, mix with normal men and women, to whom examinations are just episodes in the lives of other people, fearsome but remote. And remind yourself in their unruffled company that, after all, they _are_ merely episodes. You won't forget anything really important in that time. If you do, you can never properly have known it. While as for the trimmings, you will be more than compensated for the shedding of a few of these by the sanity and freshness with which your brain will come to its ordeal--as an example of the reverse of which there occurs to me the vision of a pallid young man who addressed me about six weeks ago in the hospital lobby. He was very much frightened. I didn't know who he was. Indeed I don't think that I had ever seen him before. And the remnants of a natural modesty were evidently struggling to hold him back. But Circumstance, and the awful fact that in less than an hour's time he was due for a _viva_ upon the Thames Embankment, forced him trembling towards me. He wiped his forehead--I was the only likely subject within range at the moment, and his train was to leave in exactly seven and a half minutes. "I can remember the hooklets," he gasped, "but _would_ you mind telling me, sir, which of the tapeworms it is that has four suckers?" Poor boy--I could see that his whole future was pivoting miserably upon those forgotten suckers; and, by an excessively fortunate accident, I happened to have some notes for a lecture upon the subject in one of my pockets. "If you'll wait a moment," I told him honestly, "I think that I can let you know. But I really couldn't tell you offhand." He looked at me anxiously, and I could see my reputation tottering in his eyes as I searched about for my pocket-book. "Nor could your examiners, you know," I assured him, "unless they had just primed themselves beforehand, or carried notes upon their cuffs--which they probably do." His brow cleared amazingly at this, and I could see that the relative importance of knowing, without reference, the precise number of a tapeworm's suckers was beginning to define itself a little more clearly to his distressed understanding. So I read out my notes to him, and he dashed upon his way, relieved if not rejoicing. But you mustn't ever become like that, you know, although it's not so difficult to do so as you may think.