Chapter LI

Examination day came, and Ruth bent her determined steps to the City Hall. The apartment designated was already crowded with waiting applicants, who regarded, with jealous eye, each addition to their number as so much dimunition of their own individual chance for success.

Ruth’s cheeks grew hot, as their scrutinizing and unfriendly glances were bent on her, and that feeling of utter desolation came over her, which was always so overwhelming whenever she presented herself as a suppliant for public favor. In truth, it was but a poor preparation for the inquisitorial torture before her.

The applicants were called out, one by one, in alphabetical order; Ruth inwardly blessing the early nativity of the letter H, for these anticipatory-shower-bath meditations were worse to her than the shock of a volley of chilling interrogations.

“Letter H.”

Ruth rose with a flutter at her heart, and entered a huge, barren-looking room, at the further end of which sat, in august state, the dread committee. Very respectable were the gentlemen of whom that committee was composed; respectable was written all over them, from the crowns of their scholastic heads to the very tips of their polished boots; and correct and methodical as a revised dictionary they sat, with folded hands and spectacle-bestridden noses.

Ruth seated herself in the victim’s chair, before this august body, facing a flood of light from a large bay-window, that nearly extinguished her eyes.

“What is your age?” asked the elder of the inquisitors.

Scratch went the extorted secret on the nib of the reporter’s pen!

“Where was you educated?”

“Was Colburn, or Emerson, your teacher’s standard for Arithmetic?”

“Did you cipher on a slate, or black-board?”

“Did you learn the multiplication table, skipping, or in order?”

“Was you taught Astronomy, or Philosophy, first?”

“Are you accustomed to a quill, or a steel-pen? lines, or blank-paper, in writing?”

“Did you use Smith’s, or Jones’ Writing-Book?”

“Did you learn Geography by Maps, or Globes?”

“Globes?” asked Mr. Squizzle, repeating Ruth’s answer; “possible?”

“They use Globes at the celebrated Jerrold Institute,” remarked Mr. Fizzle.

“Impossible!” retorted Mr. Squizzle, growing plethoric in the face; “Globes, sir, are exploded; no institution of any note uses Globes, sir. I know it.”

“And I know you labor under a mistake,” said Fizzle, elevating his chin, and folding his arms pugnaciously over his striped vest. “I am acquainted with one of the teachers in that highly-respectable school.”

“And I, sir,” said Squizzle, “am well acquainted with the Principal, who is a man of too much science, sir, to use globes, sir, to teach geography, sir.”

At this, Mr. Fizzle settled down behind his dicky with a quenched air; and the very important question being laid on the shelf, Mr. Squizzle, handing Ruth a copy of “Pollock’s Course of Time,” requested her to read a marked passage, indicated by a perforation of his pen-knife. Poor Ruth stood about as fair a chance of proving her ability to read poetry, as would Fanny Kemble to take up a play, hap-hazard, at one of her dramatic readings, without a previous opportunity to gather up the author’s connecting thread. Our heroine, however, went through the motions. This farce concluded, Ruth was dismissed into the apartment in waiting, to make room for the other applicants, each of whom returned with red faces, moist foreheads, and a “Carry-me-back-to-Old-Virginia” air.

An hour’s added suspense, and the four owners of the four pair of inquisitorial spectacles marched, in procession, into the room in waiting, and wheeling “face about,” with military precision, thumped on the table, and ejaculated:

“Attention!”

Instantaneously, five-and-twenty pair of eyes, black, blue, brown, and gray, were riveted; and each owner being supplied with pen, ink, and paper, was allowed ten minutes (with the four-pair of spectacles levelled full at her) to express her thoughts on the following subject: “Was Christopher Columbus standing up, or sitting down, when he discovered America?”

The four watches of the committee men being drawn out, pencils began to scratch; and the terminus of the allotted minutes, in the middle of a sentence, was the place for each inspired improvisatrice to stop.

These hasty effusions being endorsed by appending each writer’s signature, new paper was furnished, and “A-t-t-e-n-t-i-o-n!” was again ejaculated by a short, pursy individual, who seemed to be struggling to get out of his coat by climbing over his shirt collar. Little armies of figures were then rattled off from the end of this gentleman’s tongue, with “Peter Piper Pipkin” velocity, which the anxious pen-women in waiting were expected to arrest in flying, and have the “sum total of the hull,” as one of the erudite committee observed, already added up, when the illustrious arithmetician stopped to take wind.

This being the finale, the ladies were sapiently informed that, as only one school mistress was needed, only one out of the large number of applicants could be elected, and that “the Committee would now sit on them.”

At this gratifying intelligence, the ladies, favored by a plentiful shower of rain, betook themselves to their respective homes; four-and-twenty, God help them! to dream of a reprieve from starvation, which, notwithstanding the six-hours’ purgatory they had passed through, was destined to elude their eager grasp.

The votes were cast. Ruth was not elected. She had been educated, (whether fortunately or unfortunately, let the sequel of my story decide,) at a school where “Webster” was used instead of “Worcester.” The greatest gun on the Committee was a Worcesterite. Mr. Millet and Mr. Develin always followed in the wake of great guns. Mr. Millet and Mr. Develin voted against Ruth.