[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."' SIII, — The Spectator has
not, I trust, lost that character for straightforwardness in acknowledging a mistake which has for a long time past distinguished it. It is in that hope that I venture to direct your attention to a series of misstatements contained in your article of October 23rd on the above subject. You there state that the School Board "set to work to disinter some private instructions to School Board visitors suggesting points of inquiry to them in dealing with applications for remission from fees or excuses for non-payment, and converted them into forms of public interrogatories to be filled up by parents applying for remissions or failing to send their fees regularly." That statement is absolutely and wholly without any foundation in fact. No such " conversion " has taken place. The interrogatories to which you refer occupy the same position and are put to the same use in the present mode of procedure as they occupied in that which it has displaced. It was not filled up by the parents then ; it is not filled up by the parents now.
Again, the writer states that if the child "returns feeless, then the interrogatories are administered." There is no truth in that statement. Again, you state that the School Board have "agreed to postpone the enforcement of the 'exclusion rule' for a month." There is no rule known by that name. There is a provision for "non-admission," which is not precisely the same thing as "exclusion." But I do not care to discuss what is a mere misuse of language. What I desire to do is to And drew the bars, and to Achilles' tent The silent wheels sped safely. Then the king Fell prone, and clasped the conqueror's knees, and kissed The hand that slew his Hector, and the place Was filled with weeping, as a rainstorm fills A mountain channel, rolling down the rocks ; So they the tent, nor might a man discern Foeman from friend, for sudden ruth had rolled The blackness from Achilles' soul, and won Grace for the suppliant, and the suppliant's prayer.
Then with his ransomed dead the king returned, Grief in his heart, but grief with tempering joy, Musing the pyre, and urn, and obsequies ; Nor heedful of the day, which soon should dawn, When, slain by Pyrrhus' sword, himself should lie,
A severed trunk, and corpse without a name. 0. OGLE.
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