George Engelmann :botanical notebook 56 : Abies

Missouri Botanical Garden

PETER H. RAVEN LIBRARY

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College Entrance Examinations „ ,-i.

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COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS.

T EN years ago, the entrance examinations of our colleges,
with two or three exceptions, were solemn farces. With
profound gravity, professors and tutors listened to candidates
wildly bungling in translations, demonstrating problems in
geometry parrot-like, without comprehending their own words,
and often flatly failing to meet the so-called requirements laid
down in the catalogue; but the examiners passed them, some,
it is true, with gentle conditions, and, with beautiful impartial¬
ity, gathered the stupid and the studious, the prepared and the
unprepared, into the academic fold. The more fairly conducted
examinations of Freshman year weeded out these immature
and unsightly plants after a brief experience of prompting,
“ poneying ” and shirking ; but the harm of the hollow entrance
ordeal had been done, a career had been entered upon, a failure
in life had been made that might have been avoided at the
,§tart. These old-fashioned examinations were generally oral.
The candidates were assembled in a hall in the college building
on the appointed day. The professors and tutors turned out in
full force, and passed frorn one applicant to another, putting a
few questions in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and the newly
admitted were directed to present themselves to the College
Treasurer. These oral examinations were feasible while a
scanty number of candidates presented themselves for exami¬
nation, but, within the last v ten years, a desire has been grow¬
ing among parents in this country to send forth their sons into
the world as accurate scholars and cultivated gentlemen, and
applicants are now numbered by hundreds in many of Our col¬
leges. Written examinations have therefore been generally
adopted, and, Harvard taking the lead, faculties have been
vying with one another in making the ordeals as severe as they
were previously lax. Indeed, professors of repute have been
heard to boast: “ I assure you, sir, it is as difficult for a young
man to obtain admission into our college, as into Harvard.”
And as if it were a matter highly creditable, each college pub¬
lishes a long list of those who failed entirely, those who were
conditioned, and those who “got through.”

In the President’s Annual Report of Harvard for the year

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Compulsory Marriage.

261

women between twenty and forty years of age, twenty-three per
cent, in Scotland, and nine per cent, in Ireland. The latest
published statistics place the excess of women in.Sweden at
6.3 per cent.; Norway, 4.2 ; German Confederation, 2.3 ; Hol¬
land, 1.8; Spain, 1.5 ; France, 1.5 ; Denmark, 0.8 ; Prussia,
0.7. The census of i860 gives an excess of about 5 per cent,
in the United State?. In England and Wales there are 513,000
more women than men.

A writer in the North British Review not long ago asserted
that there were then 1,537,000 unmarried women in these two
countries. “ England,” he added, “ has always been the coun¬
try of old maids—it is becoming so more and more.” This is
due to the increased luxury of the age. While four or five per
cent, of Eng l ish wome n ma y prefer celib acy from taste or tem-

&lso

0 our divergence from a thoroughly natural, sound,
social condition/'

Inc women are to blame, but men are incomparably more
so; for it is they who do qr might give the tone on all social
matters. Thousands of women would prefer love to splendor—
a bare competence, or even struggling poverty with marriage to
the most luxurious life without—if men had the courage to offer
them the choice.. The latter, however, prefer a vicious and
heartless youth, and a joyless and loveless old age, because
they have no nerve to jyork, and no fortitude to forego. This
is strong language, but we fear it is warranted by the facts not
only in England, but perhaps the United States.

We have not yet learned the fate of the Tennessee bill, im¬
posing a tax upon bachelors. Its enactment into a law cer¬
tainly could produce no harm, and might, result in considerable
good were the tax levied increased ten or twenty fold. If every
marriageable man was compelled to annually pay into the
general fund a sufficient sum to maintain a marriageable woman,
there would very soon be less talk about the American stock
running out. We merely make the suggestion for the benefit
of our State Legislators,

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