I had, therefore, you see, no cause of quarrel with the examining board.

They had, it is true, made me out to have only barely come up to the required standard in French--a language with which I had been familiar from childhood; but, they compensated for this, by according me full marks in book-keeping--which I had been totally ignorant of a week before the examination; and, I only answered the questions asked me therein through dint of the wholesale theoretical cramming of my tutor! So much for the value of the ordeal.
I maintain that, in many instances, these competitive examinations are quite uncalled-for, and a great mistake.
In the one I was engaged in, for example, two-thirds of the candidates were men who had already been employed in the public service as "writers"-- some for years.

Now, if these were held competent to fulfil the duties of office life, as they must have been, or they would not be thus employed, surely, it was unnecessary, as well as unfair and absurd, to subject them to test the school-boy acquirements, that many had forgotten, which offered no real proof of their aptitude to be public accountants.
And, secondly, I firmly believe that competition neither produces the best clerks--out of those who thus initiate their official life, and who might not have been engaged beforehand, as writers or otherwise; nor does the system, as I've already said, afford any guarantee for a sound education on the part of those examined.
The Polite Letter Writer Commissioners, I have no doubt, do their duty as well as they can, in that position and state of life to which an enthusiastic reformer, backed up by an Act of Parliament, has called them; but, at the present time, ignorance has every facility afforded it for riding rampant over their "crucial" tests, while "crammers" drive, with the greatest glee, coaches and sixes by the score through their most zealous enactments.
If the competitive theory is to be the basis of our civil service organisation, it should be extended to all classes and grades in official life; and not be limited merely to the junior clerk at the bottom of the red-tape ladder.
Let every one, up to the under-secretaries of state and members of the cabinet even, be examined and tested and docketed in due order of merit--in the same way as the Chinese conduct their mandarin school--and distribute variously coloured buttons to graduates of different degrees, letting "the best man win," in accordance with the old motto of the now extinct "Prize Ring." Perhaps, if ministers were subjected to some such ordeal--and there might be a good deal in it if it were only properly conducted--they would find themselves fit to grapple with more vital matters than political pyrotechnics, which are only fired off to suit popular clamour; and, were they better acquainted with history, especially that of their own country--as they would be, if forced to "cram" like the commissioners' candidates--they would hesitate before sacrificing the old renown of England, and the interests which she has consolidated with her blood and treasure for generations, to suit a bastard diplomacy invented by the "peace-at-any-price" party of patriotism-less patriots! The vicar, naturally, was delighted with my success; and, as for little Miss Pimpernell, she was quite jubilant.
"Dear me, Frank!" she said, when I took the letter announcing my appointment to show her the same evening I received it.

"I am _so_ glad--I can't tell you how glad--my dear boy! Why, we will have you and Miss Min soon setting up house-keeping! Did I not tell you that things would be certain to come right, if you only waited, and worked, and hoped?
Never you go against Keble again, my boy." I promised her I would not.

I should have liked also to have spoken to Mrs Clyde immediately, as Min was still away, and I could hear nothing of her; but, she had left town, too, and so I was unable to carry out my wish--which, indeed, Miss Pimpernell had strongly advised against my doing.