There are no girls more engaging than those who are trying to do or to be something of value, and having said that, our opinion may be inferred of the numerous company who have worked so diligently during the three months of this interesting competition. It has been an affair of “long breath,” and has proved this, if it has proved anything, that our girls are of the right sort. That it has been enjoyed is clear from many letters received from competitors. “It has taken up a good deal of time,” writes one girl, “but the time has been well spent, because the questions asked were of real value, and to be able to answer at least the greater number of them, might be regarded as a general test of our being well informed.” The competition was chiefly a lesson in the art of hunting up information, an art always of service. The questions were not to be replied to by guess-work, or by the exercise of a ready imagination. In the preparation of their papers, girls learned how to make good use of books of reference, and some communicative ones have told us that they have thereby gained a clearer notion than they ever entertained before of the value of such works as the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, Chambers’s _Encyclopædia_, Haydn’s _Dictionary of Dates_, Dr. Brewer’s _Phrase and Fable_, the _Imperial Dictionary_, and Chambers’s _Book of Days_. We noticed that THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER volumes had proved to many a perfect library of knowledge and, indeed, it is not too much to say that a diligent study of the back numbers of this periodical would have enabled anyone to answer nearly all the questions without consulting any other work whatever. A pleasing feature in the competition was that girls, as a general rule, improved as they went on. One who had a third-class place at the start would end in the second rank, and a second-class girl would become a first. This is as it should be. Few—hardly any—began well and then relapsed into inaccuracy and carelessness. A good number—but not so many as we expected—failed to send in all the three instalments of papers. Sometimes, perhaps, they grew tired, and sometimes illness and circumstances over which they had not control may have prevented them. These, of course—if they have obtained a place at all—have not got so good a place as if they had replied, or tried to reply, to the whole seventy-two questions. The most important feature of the answers was accuracy, and both in that and in the manner in which the sense was expressed, competitors did very well indeed. Where the answers admitted of a difference of opinion, we saw many signs of intelligence and of a desire to think and investigate for oneself that cannot be too strongly commended and encouraged.