A School Board boy, competing for one of the Peek prizes, carried this confusion of widely different events even farther.  He had to write a short biography of Jonah, and he produced the following:  ``He was the father of Lot, and had two wives.  One was called Ishmale and the other Hagher; he kept one at home, and he turned the other into the dessert, when p 163she became a pillow of salt in the daytime and a pillow of fire at night.’’ The sketch of Moses is equally unhistoric:  ``Mosses was an Egyptian.  He lived in an ark made of bullrushes, and he kept a golden calf and worshipped braizen snakes, and et nothing but kwales and manna for forty years.  He was caught by the hair of his head, while riding under the bough of a tree, and he was killed by his son Absalom as he was hanging from the bough.’’ But the ignorance of the schoolboy was quite equalled by the undergraduate who was asked ``Who was the first king of Israel?’’ and was so fortunate as to stumble on the name of Saul.  Finding by the face of the examiner that he had hit upon the right answer, he added confidentially, ``Saul, also called Paul.’’

The American child, however, managed to cover a larger space of time in his confusion when he said, ``Elijah was a good man, who went up to heaven without dying, and threw his cloak down for Queen Elizabeth to step over.’’

A boy was asked in an examination, ``What did Moses do with the tabernacle?’’ p 164and he promptly answered, ``He chucked it out of the camp.’’ The scandalised examiner asked the boy what he meant, and was told that it was so stated in the Bible.  On being challenged for the verse, the boy at once repeated ``And Moses took the tabernacle and pitched it without the camp’’ (Exod. xxxiii. 7).

The book might be filled with extraordinary instances of school translation, but room must be found for one beautiful specimen quoted by Moore in his Diary.  A boy having to translate ``they ascended by ladders’’ into Latin, turned out this, ``ascendebant per adolescentiores’’ (the comparative degree of lad, i.e., ladder).

The late Mr. Barrett, Musical Examiner to the Society of Arts, gave some curious instances of blundering in his report on the Examinations of 1887, which is printed in the Programme of the Society’s Examinations for 1888:—­

``There were occasional indications that the terms were misunderstood. `Presto’ signifies `turn over,’ `Lento’ `with style.’ `Staccato’ was said to mean `stick on p 165the notes,’ or `notes struck and at once raised.’