HOUR EXAMINATIONS.

IN the recently published poem called "Deirdre" occurs an episode which I wish to relate here. The inhabitants of a peaceful fishing-village find one day on the beach, cast there by the drifting ice, a living animal, to them unknown.

"A small, frail thing it was, with pearly hair, -

The far-sent offspring of the Northern Bear,

And to their simple minds a thing like it

Upon their windy shores had never lit;

As weak it moaned like a young lamb that wails,

For its lost mother in the lonesome dales."

The people thought it an offspring of some god; they nourished and cared for it, built for it a temple, and worshipped it;

"And as the years went on it grew and grew,

Till the great bull that ranged the pastures through

Seemed like a heifer when it stood anigh."

With new strength came the creature's natural cravings, and

"One day of summer, when the village men

Were far away by mountain and by glen,"

the great bear, wandering at her will, as was her wont among the children at their play, first tasted blood, as it flowed from a child's foot pierced by a thorn.

"Then shot a dreadful flame

From the fierce depths of her red rolling eye,

And like a fiend she reared her head on high

O'er the fair child, and with fell face and grim

In hot blood wallowing tore him limb from limb."

The ravenous monster then attacks and slays the other children. The men hastening home, called by the roars and cries, heap upon one another mutual recriminations.

And then in parties two

The people ranged themselves, and slew and slew,

Strong knee to knee and bloody sword to sword;

And the deep vale the echoing terrors roared,

Till the great sun beyond the island hills

Cast his last beam upon the red-blood rills,

And the pale moon arose, - when naught was seen

But death and ashes where blithe peace had been."

I have recounted and quoted the story at this length in order to draw an analogy which concerns us nearly.

Our instructors are the village men who

"Sheared and reaped in peace and quietness,

Unknowing envy's pangs or war's distress."

We, the undergraduates, are the children who sport with merry gambols on the green. And that thing, once frail but now a huge monster which may at any moment devour us all, is the hour-examination system. We all remember the first adoption of this system; how innocent the idea seemed when first presented to us, with what care it was nursed into stronger life. Did we not honor and bow down before it, and look to it for unnumbered blessings? Then it was a small and tender thing, but now it has grown, - ye gods, how it has grown! The plan as first broached had a pleasant sound in one's ears, and so long as we had but one or two examinations in a week, we cheerfully submitted for the sake of the good they did us. But now that things have come to such a pass that we find ourselves confronted every four weeks or so with three, four, five, or more examinations crowded into one week, it would seem that the pretty cub has already developed into a monster whose insatiable appetite threatens us all with destruction. With prophetic foresight I contemplate in horror the consequences of its continuance among us; I see a time, not far off, when the boldest student will have fled; when these fair halls will be the home of desolation, and the recitation-rooms of University know no occupants but the ghosts of the dead. And what of those who reared the beast that shall have undone us? Will the analogy be completed? I see - But no! here the curtain must be drawn; there are scenes which even the undergraduate cannot look upon unmoved.

Is there then no remedy for these evils? I think there is. The hour examinations are too valuable to be given up, but why should they not be so arranged as to secure us from having more than two in one week, or if that should be impossible, why should not recitations be suspended while the examinations prevail?

I know that some believe that the object of these examinations is to obtain from the students thorough daily work, and that they ought not to study up for them. Against the end proposed I have nothing to say, - it is what is needed here above all things, - but that it will ever be attained by such examinations as these I most decidedly do not believe. As long as examinations are announced beforehand, just so long will men, if for no other reason, because they know that other men will read up for them, and fear to be ranked lower than they deserve, study up their back work.

The annoyance and distraction consequent on trying to study for several examinations while also preparing several recitations a day in other studies are very great; and if this is true of real one-hour examinations, much more must it be true when they are so arranged as to amount to two hours in length, and are of an inquisitorial severity suggestive of the annuals.

I see no good reason why the actual state of things should not be accepted, and that freedom from recitations granted, which otherwise will, however much to our detriment, be taken.

W. H. T.