The instruction at school was out of date, inasmuch as, in every
branch, it lacked intelligibility. The masters were also necessarily,
in some instances, anything but perfect, even when not lacking in
knowledge of their subject. Nevertheless, the instruction as a whole,
especially when one bears in mind how cheap it was, must be termed
good, careful and comprehensive; as a rule it was given
conscientiously. When as a grown up man I have cast my thoughts back,
what has surprised me most is the variety of subjects that were
instilled into a boy in ten years. There certainly were teachers so
lacking in understanding of the proper way to communicate knowledge
that the instruction they gave was altogether wasted. For instance, I
learnt geometry for four or five years without grasping the simplest
elements of the science. The principles of it remained so foreign to me
that I did not even recognise a right-angled triangle, if the right
angle were uppermost. It so happened that the year before I had to sit
for my examinations, a young University student in his first year, who
had been only one class in front of the rest of us, offered us
afternoon instruction in trigonometry and spherical geometry gratis,
and all who appreciated the help that was being offered to them
streamed to his lessons. This young student, later Pastor Jörgen Lund,
had a remarkable gift for mathematics, and gave his instruction with a
lucidity, a fire, and a swing that carried his hearers with him. I, who
had never before been able to understand a word of the subject, became
keenly interested in it, and before many lessons were over was very
well up in it. As Jörgen Lund taught mathematics, so all the other
subjects ought to have been taught. We were obliged to be content with
less.
Lessons might have been a pleasure. They never were, or rather, only
the Danish ones. But in childhood's years, and during the first years
of boyhood they were fertilising. As a boy they hung over me like a
dread compulsion; yet the compulsion was beneficial. It was only when I
was almost fourteen that I began inwardly to rebel against the time
which was wasted, that the stupidest and laziest of the boys might be
enabled to keep up with the industrious and intelligent. There was too
much consideration shown towards those who would not work or could not
understand. And from the time I was sixteen, school was my despair. I
had done with it all, was beyond it all, was too matured to submit to
the routine of lessons; my intellectual pulses no longer beat within
the limits of school. What absorbed my interest was the endeavour to
become master of the Danish language in prose and verse, and musings
over the mystery of existence. In school I most often threw up the
sponge entirely, and laid my head on my arms that I might neither see
nor hear what was going on around me.
There was another reason, besides my weariness of it all, which at this
latter period made my school-going a torture to me. I was by now
sufficiently schooled for my sensible mother to think it would be good
for me to make, if it were but a small beginning, towards earning my
own living. Or rather, she wanted me to earn enough to pay for my
amusements myself. So I tried, with success, to find pupils, and gave
them lessons chiefly on Sunday mornings; but in order to secure them I
had called myself _Studiosus_. Now it was an ever present terror with
me lest I should meet any of my pupils as I went to school in the
morning, or back at midday, with my books in a strap under my arm. Not
to betray myself, I used to stuff these books in the most extraordinary
places, inside the breast of my coat till it bulged, and in all my
pockets till they burst.