As was fitting with sensible girls, we had numerous and intelligent answers to this question. There was a knowing air about them. A strong case was made out against hard water—a waster of fuel, a waster of time, a waster of tea, a destroyer of the colour of vegetables, a waster of soap, an enemy to the skin. Poor hard water! =5. What celebrated work was written in a week to defray the cost of the funeral of the author’s mother?= Rather more skipped this question than gave the go-by to our first one; but nearly all who attempted an answer gave the right one. And, indeed, it is one of the familiar facts of literary history that Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote his “Rasselas” in a week for the purpose of defraying the expense of his mother’s funeral and paying some small debts she had left behind. How did one competitor make it out to be “The Task” by Cowper, and another Sir Walter Scott’s “Legend of Montrose” and “Black Dwarf”? As a curiosity we may mention that a competitor who gives an account of Dr. Johnson all right, says she has got her information from her grandfather, “who knew him.” As Johnson died a hundred and fifteen years ago, our friend must have a remarkably aged grandfather! =6. How did the thistle come to be the emblem of Scotland?= In a matter of legend we did not expect all to tell the same tale, neither did they. Most girls, however, had it that the thistle was raised to this proud position out of national gratitude, and gave the story of the Danes trying to surprise the Scots by night, when one of them set his foot on a thistle and gave such a yell that he roused the Scots, who thereupon repulsed their foes. This was a question very well answered on the whole. =7. What sea has water so thick that you can move in it with difficulty?= The greater number of competitors gave the right answer—the Dead Sea, the density of the intensely salt water of which is so great that the human body will not sink in it. A good number, however, gave the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic, the remarkable feature there being the presence of an enormous mass of gulf weed. But it is the weeds that are thick there, not the water, and we said, “water so thick.” In the same way the girls who mentioned the Arctic Sea because of the ice should have taken note that we did not speak about “ice so thick.” =8. What are the characteristics of the music of Chopin?= Music being a girl’s subject, we naturally looked for good answers to this question. Good they were, the marked features of the music of this “bold and proud poetic spirit” being well indicated—his romance and sentiment, his refined harmony, his care to avoid commonplaces, his triumphs in the technical treatment of the pianoforte, and many other points illustrating how, as someone says, “he spoke of new things well worth hearing and found new ways of saying such things.” =9. Who is the greatest poetess the world has ever seen?=