AN INSPECTOR'S STORIES.

Colonist, Volume LV, Issue 13648, 13 February 1913, Page 7

AN INSPECTOR'S STORIES.

When Mr Swinburne retired in 1911, nfter thirty-five years of service, m Lancashire and Suffolk as a school inspector, he immediately prepared Ins book'of "Memories!" "and-it is Already in a second edition,.". There wa« a practical and pitying child who replied to strictures-upon the ,conduct of Dives | in giving poor Lazarus tho crumbs:— "Perhaps, Ma'am,.Lazarus kept chickens." Another teacher ended a lesson on the children who' came to a bad end through mocking a prophet: "What "■G&an do you draw from this?" /'lt shows teacher," :»aid an attentive pupil, "what a nufiiber of children a great she-bear can hold." Asked.to write about the Heights of Abraham, a young pupil-teacher eaid the French officers /fell over the cliffs into the river, and then wrote the elegy in a churchyard." But there is something about those heights that inevitablycauses the unwary to fall in. Another candidate ~;-.wrote that. Wolfe "quoted those memorable lines from 'Graves -'Energy,' "Up Guards,: and at 'cm, 1 and said, 'Gentleman, I wou.d rrther be the editor of these lines than tali© Calcutta.' ". / Oddly courteous was the peasant Woman's answer to a neighbour, who,; after-paying.'her^last-duties, to a dying friend, said, • "Come ■wvay, she'll- soon v; be in Beelzebub's,, bosom." "Hii^h Martha," spoke -thro, 'bettoMnformod""'lsi%al scholar, "that' ain?t .tho. gentleman's name." . : ' A story already .much, quoted1 from Mr Swinburne, concerns .-•- the dying collier, .comforted by his mate; with thoughts of 'an Angelic ~ hereafter. ."Shall I have wings?" cam© faintly from the bed. "Yea." ."Will thee, too:, if tKeo,comes--there.?'? "Yea," was andwcred again.: Th<?ri the^ flick man's voice spoke ' .with reviving; ; interest, "Eh, mon, I'll fly thceior a eovereign. Is it a match ?" ~ ' . Notable, too, is-the story of the ncr-Vtt-ua l^xlegrtoom,' who, when, callfed upon for a speech, rose, stretching out his. hand in the direction <^ the bride, and began: "I do not know why this tiling is thrust upon me ." A happy misconstruction of class-list order was that ■ achievejd by a.. pupil-tsaciliea-'o father, who.boastfd -proudly, "My son passed second in-the exam. He knew a, s much as the first—and., a little more.." And a warning against misconstruction of ■ kindness is conveyed when Mr Swinburne, tells how after putting a nervous teacher at her ease with a. fesv friendly words, he asked could she give a lesson on "Reindeer," and; bashfulness changed to an appealling simper as she replied, "I have one on .clouds and mist, .but not one on rain." , ..' .