208 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



read this volume. He knew well that I was working 

 at top pressure to get through the absolutely essential 

 books, and he said I need not trouble about Stubbs. 

 So the time went on, and having put in the highest possible 

 power in the last few weeks, save for a few days in town 

 to dinner at the Temple and go to Ascot, I was strung up 

 to dreadful concert pitch for that examination. 



To my mind there is no earthly good in an examination, 

 except in so far as it shows what you can do in an 

 emergency. 



There was no trouble whatever in any of the papers 

 save one, and that came second or third. It was entitled 

 " Constitutional History " though we were to be 

 examined in constitutional Law ; and eight or nine 

 questions out of twelve were set straight out of Stubbs, 

 whose book I had never read. 



That was indeed an awful situation, and several of my 

 friends, who were in the same case as myself, gave it up 

 in despair, but after spending ten minutes in that same 

 condition, I began to look at the questions, and realised 

 that I had some ideas of my own about them regardless 

 of Stubbs. Therefore I fell to, and wrote voluminously 

 all round about those questions, lugging in any special 

 item of knowledge likely to catch the fancy of an examiner, 

 and connecting it, however indirectly, with the subject 

 matter of the question. It is no use advising people about 

 how to pass examinations. I could always write fast 

 and readily, and, at whatever pace, my handwriting is 

 legible. That last point is half the battle with examiners. 

 On the other hand, my friend, the late C. A. Whitmore, 

 who was in for this same examination, wrote slowly and 

 with great precision. He marshalled his facts concisely 

 and, on the whole, covered about a quarter of the paper 

 that I did. Let every man do what suits him best. I 

 could not possibly have answered those questions in the 

 way that Whitmore did, and I am still more certain that 

 he could not have dashed into them in the way that I 

 did, but the result tells its own tale, and, in this con- 



