It was well for the purposes of the hoaxers that Mr. Pucker's
trepidation prevented him from making a calm perusal of the paper; he
was nervously doing his best to turn the nonsensical English word by
word into equally nonsensical Latin, when his limited powers of Latin
writing were brought to a full stop by the untranslatable word "bosh."
As he could make nothing of this, he gazed appealingly at the benignant
features of Mr. Verdant Green. The appealing gaze was answered by our
hero ordering Mr. Pucker to hand in his paper, and reply to the
questions on history and Euclid. Mr. Pucker took the two papers of
questions, and read as follows:
HISTORY.
"1. Show the strong presumption there is, that Nox was the god of
battles.
"2. In what way were the shades on the banks of the Styx supplied with
spirits?
"3. Give a brief account of the Roman emperors who visited the United
States, and state what they did there.
EUCLID.
"1. Show the fallacy of defining an angle, as a worm at one end and a
fool at the other.
"2. If a freshman _A_ have any mouth _x_ and a bottle of wine _y_, show
how many applications of _x_ to _y_ will place _y_+_y_ before _A_.
"3. Find the value of a 'bob,' a 'tanner,' a 'joey,' a 'tizzy,' a
'poney,' and a 'monkey.'
"4. If seven horses eat twenty-five acres of grass in three days, what
will be their condition on the fourth day? Prove this by practice."
Mr. Pucker did not know what to make of such extraordinary and
unexpected questions. He blushed, tried to write, fingered his curls,
and then gave himself over to despair; whereupon Mr. Bouncer was seized
with an immoderate fit of laughter, which brought the farce almost to an
end.
"I'm afraid, young gentleman," said Mr. Bouncer, "that your learning is
not yet up to the Brazenface standard. But we will give you one more
chance to retrieve yourself. We will try a little _vivâ voce_, Mr.
Pucker. If a coach-wheel 6 inches in diameter and 5 inches in
circumference makes 240 revolutions in a second, how many men will it
take to do the same piece of work in ten days?"
Mr. Pucker grew redder and hotter than before, and gasped like a fish
out of water.
"I see you will not do for us yet awhile," said his tormentor, "and we
are therefore under the painful necessity of rejecting you. I should
advise you to read hard for another twelve months, and try to master
those subjects in which you have now failed."
Disregarding poor Mr. Pucker's entreaties to matriculate him this once
for the sake of his mother, when he would read very hard--indeed he
would--Mr. Fosbrooke turned to Mr. Bouncer and gave him some private
instructions, and Mr. Verdant Green immediately disappeared in search of
his scout, Filcher. Five minutes afterwards, as the dejected Mr. Pucker
was crawling out of the quad, Filcher came and led him back to the rooms
of Mr. Slowcoach, the real examining tutor.
"But I have been examined," Mr. Pucker kept on saying dejectedly. "I
have been examined, and they rejected me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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