LINN^«AN MEMORIAL ADDRESS 249 



SCHOOL, COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY YEARS. 



The mental training of the child Linniuus was, of course, 

 begun at home. At seven years of age he was well enough 

 advanced to have a tutor. At ten he was sent away to a Latin 

 school and theological preparatory at Wexio, not many miles 

 from home. After eight years there, the progress made in 

 studies looking to the office of a Lutheran ecclesiastic seems 

 not to have been satisfactory ; and now the Reverend Nils 

 Linna?us came journeying to Wexio. The instructors whose 

 duty it had been to train the boy in Hebrew and biblical learn- 

 ing had failed to interest him ; and they said to the father that 

 they could not, on their consciences, advise him to continue the 

 youth at school. In their view it would be better at once to 

 apprentice him to the learning of some handicraft; that of car- 

 penter, or tailor, for example. Doubtless this counsel would 

 have been followed, but that Pastor Linneeus had another errand 

 at Wexio that must be attended tobeforethe disheartened return 

 to Stenbrohult, whither, as it now seemed, he would have to 

 convey his son now eighteen years old, as withdrawn from 

 college because of his having no taste for learning ; that is, 

 theological. 



Pastor Linnasus's other errand was that of placing himself 

 under the direction of an eminent physician of Wexio as to an 

 ailment of his. The physician was Dr. Rothman, who was 

 also a lecturer on medicine at the college; and this man, as it 

 happened, both knew and was much interested in the youthful 

 member of the Linngeus family. When the father confidingly 

 mentioned his deep grief over his son's failure at school, Dr. 

 Rothman was able to cheer him with a very different account 

 of his boy's proficiency. He was so confident that, out of this 

 bright youth a great physician might be made, that he proposed 

 to receive him, with the father's consent, into his own house for 

 a year, and give him special instruction, free of all charge ; and 

 this was done. 



Now, while making himself the despair of his tutors in 

 Hebrew and theology, what had the young Linnaeus been accom- 

 plishing all these years ? The idler which these thought him, he 

 had not been. In mathematics and physics he was quite distin- 



