SAT EXAM PREPARATION 2026

Close at hand is a bridge over the River Thames, an admirable vantage ground for us to make a
survey. The river flows beneath; barges pass, with timber, bursting with corn; there on one side are the domes and spires of the city; on the other,
Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. It is a place to stand on by the hour, dreaming. But now we are pressed for time. Now we are here to consider facts; now we must fix our eyes upon the procession-the procession of the sons of educated

There they go, our brothers who have been educated at public schools and universities,
mounting those steps, passing in and out of those 5 doors, ascending those pulpits, preaching, teaching. administering justice, practicing medicine, making money. It is a solemn sight, always a pro now, for the past twenty crossing a desert. . . . By 0 years or so, it is no longer a sight merely, a graph, or fresco scrawled upon the walls of time, at which we can look with merely an esthetician along at the tail at the end of the procession, we go ourselves. And that
25 makes a difference. We who have looked so long at the pageant in books, or from a curtained window watched educated men leaving the house at about

nine-thirty to go to an office, returning to the house at about six-thirty from an office, need look passively so no longer. We too can leave the house, can mount. those steps, pass in and out of those doors, . . . make money, administer justice. . . . We who now agitat
le pens may in another century or two m a pulpit. Nobody will dare contradict us

5 then; we shall be the mouthpieces of the divine spirit-a solemn thought, is it not? Who can say whether, as time goes on, we may not dress in military uniform, with gold lace on our breasts,
swords at our sides, and something like the old y coal-scuttle on our heads, save that that
venerable object was never decorated with plumes of
white horsehair. You laugh-indeed the shadow of the private house still makes those little queer. We have worn private clothes so 45 long. . . . But we have not come here to laugh, or to talk of fashions-men’s and women’s. We are here, on the bridge, to ask ourselves certain questions.