competent. Don't be impatient. Everything comes to him who studies while he waits the favorable opportunity. If you are well up in spelling and punctuation, alert and capable in taking dictation, rapid and accurate in transcribing your shorthand notes, well-informed on copying letters, mimeographing, hektographing, manifolding and card indexing and, above all, have "nerve" to face a new dictator, then you are ready to leave school.
Your teacher should give you a thorough examination. You should be able to write at least 100 words per minute in shorthand for five minutes, and even for ten minutes would be better. You should be able to transcribe the notes you have taken, in the five or ten-minute test, on the typewriter at the rate of 20 words per minute. If you can transcribe them at the rate of 25 or 30 words per minute accurately and practically without error, you are doing well. In this examination your teacher should give you new matter, and not letters that you have written several times before. It would be no test to take letters you had written before, for in all probability you would know them by heart. The test should be on business letters of not too technical a nature; on the other hand, they should not be made up of words of one syllable, but should be a fair mixture of ordinary language such as would be used by one business firm communicating with another. If you succeed in putting the letters in really proper shape,
