and his influential, distinguished relative added:

— Mind you don't give your name.

I called the young man a second time — I had been told that he failed in both sessions — and asked him to tell me the cause of his failure. He condescended and answered:

— The cause of our failure is that the subjects were not classical.

As for that "influential, distin-guished relative," I learned that he had come to ask the officials to show him the young man's papers so that he might review the examination himself and sat-isfy himself of the committee's fairness, because he believes his relative has been wronged..

Then comes the turn of Miss Sonia Abboud, a pupil of the French Evangelical College and one of those who passed the bac-calaureate back in the June ses-sion. She says that her success is owed to the school's care and to her teachers, who are among the finest of women instructors, and to the complete harmony among the pupils; for there are no pupils who fail in the second class and get moved up to the first, wearying themselves and wearying the girls who pass.

— Do you intend to continue your studies?

— I shall sit for the philosophy section, and then for the faculty of law or political science, because I intend to enter the diplomatic corps.

— And if it should happen that a decent young man comes asking for your hand?

— If he is content to let me finish my studies, why not?

— And now — to what do you attribute this scandalous failure?

— There is no room for believ-ing what is being said, that the texts were far from the curricula and were not "classical." As for the causes of failure — why should I not be frank? The

candidates did not prepare all the literature subjects, out of negli-gence, laziness, and devotion to amusements beyond the measure needed for recreation. As for the young men, I think one of the causes of their failure is that their brains were busy thinking of....

Here a witty, mischievous girl interrupts her and says: "of the white imps"...

I leave the circle and go off toward one of the offices, and the student Abdul Karim al-Natour catches up with me — he failed by two marks.

Q — Would you care to say something for publication in "The Woman's Voice"?

A — And who more fitting than woman to publish the grievance of the sons! I sincerely believe that an examining committee composed of "practicing teachers" would be more merciful to the students! We appreciate the culture and the learning of every member of the examining committee, but we should like — in the mathematics branch, for example — to have our knowledge examined by math-ematics teachers, not by engineers who left the school benches twenty years ago. And the same measure applies to the branches of philosophy and letters. I do not claim genius, nor do I say that I am strong in every branch; but, Madam, I failed because of two marks. Two marks only!

*

O dear youth, rushing toward certificates and toward the fever of examinations, when will all the paths of success be smoothed before you: the home, the teacher, the books, the surround-ings? When?

*

Among the Government Teachers

I turned at once to a circle of the government teachers and laid before them the theory of the student Abdul Karim al-Natour. Among them was a lady teacher

who is truly the first lady of the mistresses of teaching in this country, and she exclaimed:

— He is quite right, my friend. Which of us, having left teaching for ten years, would remain in touch with the mentality of the students? Or with the examina-tion subjects?

Then I asked a young woman teacher about the causes of failure and the decline of the cultural level. She said:

— The family! And these new fortunes! They are a graveyard for the brains of the rising generation. The cinema, the amusements, the evening parties of this society and the tales of those parties — and then this money paid to the private tutors who come to the students at home — the homes of the rich, of course. All these processions of rich men's sons pay no attention to a lesson the school teacher explains, relying on the teacher of the evening... He solves the arithmetic exercise, and he writes the composition, and so on..

Fleischmann's

Dry Yeast

Rely on it for your dough and you will taste the most delicious bread

FLEISCHMANN'S

ACTIVE DRY YEAST

FOR BAKING

NET WEIGHT 6 OUNCES

MANUFACTURED BY STANDARD