The second letter was to the Senior Bursar, who had often before proved himself a friend to Mr Bridges, and did not fail him in this instance.
BURSARE SENIOR, Ego humiliter begs pardonum te becausus quaereri dignitatum shoeblacki and credo me getturum esse hoc locum.
Your humble servant, THOMASUS BRIDGESSUS.
Shortly afterwards Mr. Bridges was called upon, with six other competitors, to attend in the Combination Room, and the following papers were submitted to him.
I
1. Derive the word "blacking." What does Paley say on this subject? Do you, or do you not, approve of Paley's arguments, and why? Do you think that Paley knew anything at all about it?
2. Who were Day and Martin? Give a short sketch of their lives, and state their reasons for advertising their blacking on the Pyramids. Do you approve of the advertising system in general?
3. Do you consider the Japanese the original inventors of blacking?
State the principal ingredients of blacking, and give a chemical analysis of the following substances: Sulphate of zinc, nitrate of silver, potassium, copperas and corrosive sublimate.
4. Is blacking an effective remedy against hydrophobia? Against cholera? Against lock-jaw? And do you consider it as valuable an instrument as burnt corks in playing tricks upon a drunken man?
This was the Master's paper. The Mathematical Lecturer next gave him a few questions, of which the most important were:-II
1. Prove that the shoe may be represented by an equation of the fifth degree. Find the equation to a man blacking a shoe: in rectangular co-ordinates; in polar co-ordinates.
2. A had 500 shoes to black every day, but being unwell for two days he had to hire a substitute, and paid him a third of the wages per shoe which he himself received. Had A been ill two days longer there would have been the devil to pay; as it was he actually paid the sum of the geometrical series found by taking the first n letters of the substitute's name. How much did A pay the substitute? (Answer, 13s. 6d.)3. Prove that the scraping-knife should never be a secant, and the brush always a tangent to a shoe.
4. Can you distinguish between meum and tuum? Prove that their values vary inversely as the propinquity of the owners.
5. How often should a shoe-black ask his master for beer notes?
Interpret a negative result.
