696 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
the night. At 2 o’clock next morning, the room of young Linnzus 
being illuminated, the doctor quietly made his way to the door, opened 
it and went in. The young man was found alone, at his study table, 
which was covered with open books. <A step nearer the table disclosed 
the interesting and not readily accountable fact that all were books 
of botany, and out of Stobzus’s own library that was always kept 
securely locked. To the question how he obtained those books from 
the locked library Linneus answered in brief, and very frankly, that 
the other student had desired of him a course of instruction in 
physics; that he had begun the course, and was continuing it, upon 
the stipulated condition that he, who had free access to the library, 
should nightly bring him books of botany, which he himself would 
study late at night, so that they might be returned to the lbrary 
shelves in the early morning before the household should be astir. 
Doctor Stobeus, suppressing the pleasure and approbation that were 
mingled with his amazement, said, “ Go to bed, and hereafter sleep 
while other people are asleep.” The next morning he sent for Lin- 
nexus to come to his study, asked him to rehearse again the story of 
how he obtained those books, then gave him a duplicate key to the 
library, together with permission to use it as freely as if it were his 
own. Moreover, as he had hitherto nothing but his lodging with 
Stobzeus, he was now invited to take his meals at his table; was often 
sent to visit patients, and in every way treated with affectionate 
regard. 
When nearing the end of his year at Lund, Linneus fell danger- 
ously ill. At the beginning of a slow convalescence they sent him to 
the parental home, the parsonage at Stenbrohult. Here his admiring 
first patron, Doctor Rothman, of Wexi6, visited him. He was now 
ambitious that his former pupil, instead of returning to Lund, should 
enter the great university at Upsala, where men of renown occupied 
professional chairs, Roberg in medicine and Rudbeck the younger in 
botany. The parents, in view of the quite marvelous successes of 
their boy during the two years that they had left him without finan- 
cial aid, seem to have relented, and partly forgiven his having disap- 
pointed their wishes as to a vocation, and he was given some money 
with which to procure conveyance to Upsala and make the beginnings 
of a career at that celebrated seat of learning; this, however, with the 
stern assurance that this was all they would be able to do; that no re- 
mittances from home would be forthcoming. Before the first year 
at Upsala was completed Linnzus was penniless and almost bare- 
footed, being obliged to line his shoes with birch bark and pasteboard, 
and his clothing was worse than threadbare. He was now in the 
twenty-third year of his age, and in his distress he still consoled him- 
self with studies botanical. In the midst of the botanic garden at 
Upsala he sat, one autumn day, drawing up descriptions of some rare 
