CHAPTER IX. 



ASTRONOMICAL WISDOM AND ASTROLOGICAL 



FOLLY. 



"Into death's hidden hour ye mortals are prying, 

 Searching what is the way ye shall come to your end. 

 To interpret the teaching of planets ye' re trying, 

 Which star is man's enemy, which is his friend." 



N THE same year in which Rudolph ascended the 

 throne of Germany, a poor little five-year old boy 

 living with his grandparents in Wurtemberg, was 

 attacked with small-pox; his father was with the 

 army in the Netherlands, his mother had followed her hus- 

 band into the field, and the boy was nursed through the 

 horrid disease to convalescence by his grandparents. After 

 recovering his strength a year later, John was sent to school, 

 but the poverty of his father, who had returned from the 

 war, obliged him to leave the school in two years time in 

 order to do the work of a servant at home. While so engaged 

 he prepared himself for the University and in spite of a frail 

 body, weakened by serious illnesses, and notwithstanding 

 pinching poverty and family dissensions, John Kepler com- 

 pleted his studies at Tubingen. At the University he dis- 

 tinguished himself by an essay in favor of the Copernican 

 system, which led to an invitation to take the chair of astrono- 



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