Mr Al-Khapoun's Christmas Quiz, 1994

1. ``That boy,'' said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, ``that boy could harangue an Athenian mob, better than you or I could address an English one.'' He who honoured me with this eulogy, was a scholar, ``and a ripe and good one'': and, of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic, lest I should expose his ignorance; and finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by [Brasenose] College, Oxford; and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men, whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy and inelegant.

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2.                       And now the Irish are ashamed
                         To see themselves in one year tamed:
                                       So much one man can do
                                       That does both act and know.

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3. Les genoux pliés, penchés côté à côté sur un tas de ferraille, ils n'étaient jamais las de s'entraider à suspendre un contrepoids, à ajuster un levier, à monter et à démonter des roues s'engrenant l'une dans l'autre; des discussions sans fin s'établissaient autour de l'emplacement d'un boulon ou du graissage d'une glissière. L'ingéniosité de Zénon dépassait de beaucoup celle du lent cerveau de Colas Gheel, mais les mains épaisses de l'artisan étaient d'une dextérité dont s'émerveillait l'élève du chanoine, qui expérimentait pour la première fois avec autre chose que des livres.
       --Prachtig werk, mijn zoon, prachtig werk, disait pesamment le contremaître en passant son bras lourd autour du cou de l'écolier.

   [Knees bent, leaning side by side over a pile of scrap metal, they never tired of helping each other to balance a counterweight, adjust a lever, or put together or take apart cogwheels locking into one another. They talked endlessly about the placing of a bolt or greasing a bearing race. Zénon was far more imaginative than the slow-thinking Colas Gheel, but the artisan's thick hands worked with a dexterity that astonished the parson's pupil, who was for the first time in his life working with something other than books.
       ``Great work, my lad, great work'', said the foreman, putting his heavy arm around the schoolboy's shoulders.]

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4. I have often wondered how an artist has ever emerged from Australia, especially from Sydney. The average Australian, though often gifted and domestically talented, is ineducable.

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5. ``I can't Arthur,'' returned -- , ``be denounced as heartless by the whole society of China without setting myself right when I have the opportunity of doing so, and you must be very well aware that there was Paul and Virginia which had to be returned and which was returned without note or comment, not that I mean to say you could have written to me watched as I was but if it had only come back with a red wafer on the cover I should have known that it meant Come to Pekin Nankeen and What's the third place, barefoot.''

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6.                       Ich bin der wohlbekannte Sänger,
                         Der vielgereiste Rattenfänger
                         Den diese altberühmte Stadt
                         Gewiß besonders nötig hat.
                         Und wären's Ratten noch so viele,
                         Und wären Wiesel mit im Spiele;
                         Von allen säubr'ich diesen Ort,
                         Sie müssen miteinander fort.

   [I am the famous singer, the much-travelled ratcatcher, whom this famous town most definitely needs. And however many rats there be, and even if there are weasels too, I'll clear them all out of this place: they will all have to go together.]

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7. If the Tortoise's modesty forbade him to disguise his timid nature, it did not prevent him attributing to himself a kind of lofty intellectual air - which I for one have no recollection of.

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8.                       Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life:
                         Nor Scott, for his romances, though fascinating, are yet intelligible.

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9.                       This bed it was a lord's bed where she light,
                         Who nobly pitying this poor woman's hap,
                         Gave alms both to receive, and to delight,
                         And made the golden shower fall in her lap.

                         Then in a freedom asks her as they lay
                         Whose were her lips and breasts: and she swears, his:
                         For hearts are open when thoughts fall to play.
                         At last he asks her, whose her backside is?
                                               She vow'd that it was Scoggin's only part
                                               Who never yet came nearer to her heart.

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10. We landed outside the university, where the dons, whose arguments had so thickly populated the ether that they had seen neither sun nor rain for five years, welcomed us like heroes and took us in to feast.

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