Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1876 — A Singular Trade. [ARTICLE]

A Singular Trade.

There is a singular trade in Paris. All boarding-schools here are extremely desirous to have among tlieir pupils the highest prize man. There is an annual examination of all the school-boys of a given standing in Paris. One of them is the highest prize man. To have trained the highest prize man is the best possible advertisement of a school. Boardingschool masters are consequently always on the lookout for boys who promise to carry off this distinction. Their parents hold a sort of auction of the bright boy and confide him to the boarding-school master who bids highest for him. A hopeful candidate for the Derby is not more sedulously watched and trained. All the masters take the utmost pains with him. He is drilled, and crammed, and examined, in school hours and out of school hours. He is made to feel, night as well as day, that he was born, fed and educated for no other purpose but to carry off' this great prize. He leads the life of tlie Strasburg goose, whose liver is to have the honor of entering a pate de foie gras.—Scribner for April.