I had not been studying Jurisprudence much more than a year before it
began to weigh very heavily upon me. The mere sight of the long rows of
_Schou's Ordinances_, which filled the whole of the back of my
writing-table, were a daily source of vexation. I often felt that I
should not be happy until the Ordinances were swept from my table. And
the lectures were always so dreary that they positively made me think
of suicide--and I so thirsty of life!--as a final means of escape from
the torment of them. I felt myself so little adapted to the Law that I
wasted my time with Hamlet-like cogitations as to how I could give up
the study without provoking my parents' displeasure, and without
stripping myself of all prospects for the future. And for quite a year
these broodings grew, till they became a perfect nightmare to me.
I had taken a great deal of work upon myself; I gave lessons every day,
that I might have a little money coming in, took lessons myself in
several subjects, and not infrequently plunged into philosophical works
of the past, that were too difficult for me, such as the principal
works of Kant. Consequently when I was nineteen, I begun to feel my
strength going. I felt unwell, grew nervous, had a feeling that I could
not draw a deep breath, and when I was twenty my physical condition was
a violent protest against overwork. One day, while reading Kant's
_Kritik der Urteilskraft_, I felt so weak that I was obliged to go to
the doctor. The latter recommended physical exercises and cold
shower-baths.
The baths did me good, and I grew so accustomed to them that I went on
taking them and have done so ever since. I did my gymnastic exercises
with a Swede named Nycander, who had opened an establishment for
Swedish gymnastics in Copenhagen.
There I met, amongst others, the well-known Icelandic poet and
diplomatist, Grimur Thomsen, who bore the title of Counsellor of
Legation. His compatriots were very proud of him. Icelandic students
declared that Grimur possessed twelve dress shirts, three pairs of
patent leather boots, and had embraced a marchioness in Paris. At
gymnastics, Grimur Thomsen showed himself audacious and not seldom
coarse in what he said and hinted. It is true that by reason of my
youth I was very susceptible and took offence at things that an older
man would have heard without annoyance.