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Shorthand (Junior). — For Junior Civil Service. Time allowed : 3 Jwurs. Instructions to Supekvisobs. 1. Inform candidates before the time for taking up this subject that they may use pen or pencil as they please for taking notes, which should be written on ruled paper, but that they must transcribe those notes into longhand with pen and ink. 2. Inform candidates that when once you have commenced to dictate you cannot stop until the passage is finished. 3. Dictate the passages at the following rates of speed : — (a.) 50 words per minute. (b.) 80 „ (c.) 100 „ N.B. —It will be well to practise reading these aloud some time beforehand, looking at a watch or clock, so as to accustom yourself to reading at the exact rate indicated.* 4. Candidates are at liberty to take down one, two, or three passages, as they choose. All the passages required by candidates are to be dictated before any one begins to transcribe; and there should be as little delay' as possible between the readings. 5. Inform candidates that rapidity in transcribing notes into longhand is essential, and note ■carefully on the transcribed copy the exact time taken in transcription. Candidates must not look at their notes while a passage that does not concern them is being read. 6. Inform them also that the clearness and accuracy of the shorthand notes (which must in every case be sent in attached to the transcript) will be taken account of by the examiner; and that they must not alter the shorthand notes after the dictation is finished. (a.) At the rate of 50 words per minute. Takes 10 minutes. The town of St. Andrews, in the Province of Ontario (Canada), was exercised very greatly during August over the action of its Borough Council. There was great opposition to the granting'of a publican's license in the locality, and a deputation of women, armed with a 1 monster petition against the | hotel, waited on the Council, who have the power of granting licenses. Their urgency and protestations were the means of delaying action for several weeks, but, watching their opportunity, the liquor party pushed the matter to a decision and obtained 2 the license by the casting vote of the Mayor. Then | there was trouble at St. Andrews. The indignation of the people was voiced by the Eev. Mr. Ashdoun (Congregational), who from his pulpit publicly pronounced the curse of Heaven on the traffic and all engaged in it. In the 3 course of a truly eloquent discourse he said : " The day will | come—is coming—when men will look down on the millionaire manufacturer with as much disgust and loathing as they now look down upon the bar-tender, and will not allow the one into respectable society any more than 4 they do the other. In that day State institutions will not longer |be accepted if they are built by men who have acquired their wealth by ruining the most precious thing that there is in any State—its pure and noble manhood ; in that day universities and public libraries will refuse to •5 be endowed by men who have made their money by brewing beer and distilling whiskey ; and in that day a cleaned and purified and awakened Church will strike from its membership roll all those who are engaged in, or who sanction or wink at, this grave evil, this colossal death 6 business. What we want is not the Dunkin Act, nor | the Scott Act, nor local option, nor the license system, nor prohibition, but abolition. The liquor traffic is doomed to die ; it must die, and it will. God is marching on. Men may say that this is only the wild chimera of a frenzied 7 enthusiast. Yes, that is what they | said a hundred years ago about the slaves' freedom in the Southern States; but the year came, and the day came, and the hour came when, after many reverses and defeats, the call echoed from Washington for one more last effort, and the 8 nation awoke and gave again of her | best and her bravest, and the immense army marched on singing gloriously— We are coming, Father Abraham, Three hundred thousand more. And that day such a blow was struck for freedom that the shackles were smitten,from the 9 hands of four millions of slaves, and they leaped forth from their | bondage freed men. Even so shall the day come, and its glorious dawning is drawing nearer, when there shall be overcome and cast down, and utterly abolished, the last liquor shop in America, the last opium den in 10 China, the last harem in Turkey, the last slave fetter in Africa. | (b.) At the rate of 80 words per minute. Takes 10 minutes. The first thing that strikes you about Mark Twain is his wonderful head of hair—now alas ! turning grey, though he is not yet sixty years of age. Some people say that he has no time to get it cut, but these are men who do not speak charitably of their fellow-men but with envy and malice aforethought, and—they are mostly bald. 1 The second thing that strikes you is that he has wonderfully keen eyes. They are | stuck a long way back from the bushy eyebrows, and look as though they could reckon you up in a twinkle. There could be no doubt in any one's mind, even if he had not read his works, that Mark Twain is a shrewd fellow, and a keen observer. Thirdly, you note his measured utterance —a slow Yankee drawl, with neither too much nor too little of the Yankee in it, but just

* The matter to be read is marked off into sections, each of which is to occupy a minute. The Supervisor will perhaps find it advisable to mark it off into smaller sections, each containing the number of words to be read in fifteen seconds, and to read one section in every quarter of a minute. As the candidates hear the passage read only once, the reader's articulation ought to be very clear, and the candidates ought to be so placed as to be able to hear •well.