LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
"THE SUNNY DAYS OF YOUTH."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " evecTAToR.•] SIR,—In the Spectator of September 22nd, in the very in- teresting review of "The Sunny Days of Youth," the writer makes the following statement on the subject of "Gentlemen Privates : "—" We know well enough, indeed, one class of recruits "—the boys low down at a public school—" they go to the crammer, who makes frantic efforts to pass them, sometimes successfully but often unsuccessfully, for they are plucked in spelling. This is a fact : A gentleman private said to the chaplain in the course of a conversation on the Army Entrance Examination, most of us have been plucked in spelling." I should very much like to know what proof there is for this assertion. That the idea is widely prevalent, I admit ; but as far as my own experience goes, it is a popular delusion. For the last fifteen years I have been engaged in preparing candidates for the Army Examinations. Probably about three hundred boys have passed through my hands in that time—boys of all the various shades of ability and stu- pidity found in an English public school. Oat of that number perhaps one hundred and twenty have been successful. The remainder were plucked, but not for spelling. I can safely assert that I have never met with a single Army candidate who was finally rejected for spelling. In the days of the Preliminary Examination, which was abolished last year, can- didates frequently failed to qualify in spelling at their first attempt. I have known boys fail three times, but they always got through eventually, and were allowed to compete in the "Farther Examination." It is here that so many fail.
In the recent examination (held since the "Preliminary" was abolished), I find that of the candidates who failed to qualify in one or other of the compulsory subjects—including spelling—the highest was one thousand marks short of the number necessary for admission to Sandhurst. How any of these rejected youths can say he was plucked for spelling I am at a loss to understand. If you insert this it may elicit a statement of his experiences from one or other of the much. abused erammers, whose boys are, as a rule, not the pick of the public schools.
Till further confirmation of your reviewer's statement, I am disposed to believe that the stock-phrase of the rejected Army candidate—" plucked for spelling "—is simply a con- venient cloak for his own stupidity. It reminds one of the undergraduate's excuse for getting plucked in Divinity,—that he could not expound clearly the foreign policy of Ahab.—I
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