“49.  The whole BD = the whole CA, and so-so-so-so-so-so-so.”

To me this is cloudy, but I was never well up in geometry.  That was the only effort made among the five students who appeared for examination in geometry; the other four wailed and surrendered without a fight.  They are piteous wails, too, wails of despair; and one of them is an eloquent reproach; it comes from a poor fellow who has been laden beyond his strength by a stupid teacher, and is eloquent in spite of the poverty of its English.  The poor chap finds himself required to explain riddles which even Sir Isaac Newton was not able to understand: 

“50.  Oh my dear father examiner you my father and you kindly give a number of pass you my great father.

“51.  I am a poor boy and have no means to support my mother and two brothers who are suffering much for want of food.  I get four rupees monthly from charity fund of this place, from which I send two rupees for their support, and keep two for my own support.  Father, if I relate the unlucky circumstance under which we are placed, then, I think, you will not be able to suppress the tender tear.

“52.  Sir which Sir Isaac Newton and other experienced mathematicians cannot understand I being third of Entrance Class can understand these which is too impossible to imagine.  And my examiner also has put very tiresome and very heavy propositions to prove.”

We must remember that these pupils had to do their thinking in one language, and express themselves in another and alien one.  It was a heavy handicap.  I have by me “English as She is Taught”—­a collection of American examinations made in the public schools of Brooklyn by one of the teachers, Miss Caroline B. Le Row.  An extract or two from its pages will show that when the American pupil is using but one language, and that one his own, his performance is no whit better than his Indian brother’s: 

“On history.

“Christopher Columbus was called the father of his Country.  Queen Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so that Columbus could discover America.

“The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.

“The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then scalping them.

“Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country.  His life was saved by his daughter Pochahantas.

“The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.

“The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be null and void.

“Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted.  His remains were taken to the cathedral in Havana.

“Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas.”

In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he doesn’t know anything, they put him into literature, or geometry, or astronomy, or government, or something like that, so that he can properly display the assification of the whole system—­