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 viva 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.