John came in contact with the lower orders. The boys were ill dressed;
they had sores on their noses, ugly features, and smelt bad. His own
leather breeches and greased boots produced no bad effect here. In
these surroundings, which pleased him, he felt more at his ease. He
could be on more confidential terms with these boys than with the proud
ones in the Clara School. But many of these children were very good at
their lessons, and the genius of the school was a peasant boy. At the
same time there were so-called "louts" in the lower classes, and these
generally did not get beyond the second class. He was now in the third,
and did not come into contact with them, nor did they with those in the
higher classes. These boys worked out of school, had black hands, and
were as old as fourteen or fifteen. Many of them were employed during
the summer on the brig _Carl Johann_, and then appeared in autumn with
tarry trousers, belts, and knives. They fought with chimney-sweeps and
tobacco-binders, took drams, and visited restaurants and coffee-houses.
These boys were liable to ceaseless examinations and expulsions and
were generally regarded, but with great injustice, as a bad lot. Many
of them grew up to be respectable citizens, and one who had served on
the "louts' brig" finally became an officer of the Guard. He never
ventured to talk of his sea voyages, but said that he used to shudder
when he led the watch to relieve guard at Nybrohanm, and saw the
notorious brig lying there.
One day John met a former school-fellow from the Clara School, and
tried to avoid him. But the latter came directly towards him, and asked
him what school he was attending. "Ah, yes," he said, on being told,
"you are going to the louts' school."
John felt that he had come down, but he had himself wished it. He did
not stand above his companions, but felt himself at home with them,
on friendly terms, and more comfortable than in the Clara School,
for here there was no pressure on him from above. He himself did not
wish to climb up and press down others, but he suffered himself from
being pressed down. He himself did not wish to ascend, but he felt a
need that there should be none above him. But it annoyed him to feel
that his old school-fellows thought that he had gone down. When at
gymnastic displays he appeared among the grimy-looking troop of the
Jacobites, and met the bright files of the Clara School in their
handsome uniforms and clean faces, then he was conscious of a class
difference, and when from the opposite camp the word "louts" was heard,
then there was war in the air. The two schools fought sometimes, but
John took no part in these encounters. He did not wish to see his old
friends, and to show how he had come down.
The examination day in the Jacob School made a very different
impression from that in the Clara School. Artisans, poorly clad old
women, restaurant-keepers dressed up for the occasion, coach-men, and
publicans formed the audience. And the speech of the school inspector
was quite other than the flowery one of the Archbishop. He read out the
names of the idle and the stupid, scolded the parents because their
children came too late or did not turn up at all, and the hall reechoed
the sobs of poor mothers who were probably not at all to blame for the
easily explained non-attendances, and who in their simplicity believed
that they had bad sons. It was always the well-to-do citizens' sons who
had had the leisure to devote themselves exclusively to their tasks,
who were now greeted as patterns of virtue.
In the moral teaching which the boy received he heard nothing of his
rights, only of his duties. Everything he was taught to regard as a
favour; he lived by favour, ate by favour, and went as a favour to
school. And in this poor children's school more and more was demanded
of them. It was demanded from them, for instance, that they should have
untorn clothes--but from whence were they to get them?
Remarks were made upon their hands because they had been blackened
by contact with tar and pitch. There was demanded of them attention,
good morals, politeness, _i.e._, mere impossibilities. The æsthetic
susceptibilities of the teachers often led them to commit acts of
injustice. Near John sat a boy whose hair was never combed, who had
a sore under his nose, and an evil-smelling flux from his ears. His
hands were dirty, his clothes spotted and torn. He rarely knew his
lessons, and was scolded and caned on the palms of his hands. One day
a school-fellow accused him of bringing vermin into the class. He was
then made to sit apart in a special place. He wept bitterly, ah! so
bitterly, and then kept away from school.
John was sent to look him up at his house. He lived in the Undertakers'
street. The painter's family lived with the grandmother and many small
children in one room. When John went there he found George, the boy in
question, holding on his knee, a little sister, who screamed violently.
The grandmother carried a little one on her arm. The father and mother
were away at work. In this room, which no one had time to clean, and
which could not be cleaned, there was a smell of sulphur fumes from the
coals and from the uncleanliness of the children. Here the clothes were
dried, food was cooked, oil-colours were rubbed, putty was kneaded.
Here were laid bare the grounds of George's immorality. "But," perhaps
a moralist may object, "one is never so poor that one cannot keep
oneself clean and tidy." _Sancta simplicitas!_ As if to pay for sewing
(when there was anything whole to sew), soap, clothes-washing, and time
cost nothing. Complete cleanliness and tidiness is the highest point to
which the poor can attain; George could not, and was therefore cast out.
Some younger moralists believe they have made the discovery that the
lower classes are more immoral than the higher. By "immoral" they
mean that they do not keep social contracts so well as the upper
classes. That is a mistake, if not something worse. In all cases, in
which the lower classes are not compelled by necessity, they are more
conscientious than the upper ones. They are more merciful towards their
fellows, gentler to children, and especially more patient. How long
have they allowed their toil to be exploited by the upper classes, till
at last they begin to be impatient!
Moreover, the social laws have been kept as long as possible in a state
of instability and uncertainty. Why are they not clearly defined and
printed like civil and divine laws? Perhaps because an honestly written
moral law would have to take some cognizance of rights as well as
duties.
John's revolt against the school-teaching increased. At home he learned
all he could, but he neglected the school-lessons. The principal
subjects taught in the school were now Latin and Greek, but the method
of teaching was absurd. Half a year was spent in explaining a campaign
in _Cornelius_. The teacher had a special method of confusing the
subject by making the scholar analyse the "grammatical construction" of
the sentence. But he never explained what this meant. It consisted in
reading the words of the text in a certain order, but he did not say in
which. It did not agree with the Swedish translation, and when John had
tried to grasp the connection, but failed, he preferred to be silent.
He was obstinate, and when he was called upon to explain something he
was silent, even when he knew his lesson. For as soon as he began to
read, he was assailed with a storm of reproaches for the accent he put
on the words, the pace at which he read, his voice, everything.
"Cannot you, do not you understand?" the teacher shouted, beside
himself.
The boy was silent, and looked at the pedant contemptuously.
"Are you dumb?"
He remained silent. He was too old to be beaten; besides, this form of
punishment was gradually being disused. He was therefore told to sit
down.
He could translate the text into Swedish, but not in the way the
teacher wished. That the teacher only permitted one way of translating
seemed to him silly. He had already rushed through _Cornelius_ in a few
weeks, and this deliberate, unreasonable crawling when one could run,
depressed him. He saw no sense in it.
The same kind of thing happened in the history lessons. "Now, John,"
the teacher would say, "tell me what you know about Gustav I."
The boy stands up, and his vagrant thoughts express themselves as
follows: "What I know about Gustav I. Oh! a good deal. But I knew that
when I was in the lowest class (he is now in the fourth), and the
master knows it too. What is the good of repeating it all again?"
"Well! is that all you know?"
He had not said a word about Gustav I., and his school-fellows laughed.
Now he felt angry, and tried to speak, but the words stuck in his
throat. How should he begin? Gustav was born at Lindholm, in the
province of Roslagen. Yes, but he and the teacher knew that long ago.
How stupid to oblige him to repeat it.
"Ah, well!" continues the teacher, "you don't know your lesson, you
know nothing of Gustav I." Now he opens his mouth, and says curtly and
decidedly: "Yes, I know his history well."
"If you do, why don't you answer?"
The master's question seems to him a very stupid one, and now he will
not answer. He drives away all thoughts about Gustav I. and forces
himself to think of other things, the maps on the wall, the lamp
hanging from the ceiling. He pretends to be deaf.
"Sit down, you don't know your lesson," says the master. He sits down,
and lets his thoughts wander where they will, after he has settled in
his own mind that the master has told a falsehood.
In this there was a kind of aphasia, an incapability or unwillingness
to speak, which followed him for a long time through life till the
reaction set in in the form of garrulousness, of incapacity to shut
one's mouth, of an impulse to speak whatever came into his mind. He
felt attracted to the natural sciences, and during the hour when
the teacher showed coloured pictures of plants and trees the gloomy
class-room seemed to be lighted up; and when the teacher read out of
Nilsson's _Lectures on Animal Life_, he listened and impressed all on
his memory. But his father observed that he was backward in his other
subjects, especially in Latin. Still, John had to learn Latin and
Greek. Why? He was destined for a scholar's career. His father made
inquiries into the matter. After hearing from the teacher of Latin that
the latter regarded his son as an idiot, his _amour propre_ must have
been hurt, for he determined to send his son to a private school, where
more practical methods of instruction were employed. Indeed, he was so
annoyed that he went so far in private as to praise John's intelligence
and to say some severe things regarding his teacher.
Meanwhile, contact with the lower classes had aroused in the boy a
decided dislike to the higher ones. In the Jacob School a democratic
spirit prevailed, at any rate among those of the same age. None of them
avoided each other's society except from feelings of personal dislike.
In the Clara School, on the other hand, there were marked distinctions
of class and birth. Though in the Jacob School the possession of
money might have formed an aristocratic class, as a matter of fact
none of them were rich. Those who were obviously poor were treated
by their companions sympathetically without condescension, although
the beribboned school inspector and the academically educated teacher
showed their aversion to them.
John felt himself identified and friendly with his school-fellows; he
sympathised with them, but was reserved towards those of the higher
class. He avoided the main thoroughfares, and always went through
the empty Hollandergata or the poverty stricken Badstugata. But his
school-fellows' influence made him despise the peasants who lived here.
That was the aristocratism of town-people, with which even the meanest
and poorest city children are imbued.
These angular figures in grey coats which swayed about on milk-carts or
hay-waggons were regarded as fair butts for jests, as inferior beings
whom to snowball was no injustice. To mount behind on their sledges was
regarded as the boys' inherent privilege. A standing joke was to shout
to them that their waggon-wheels were going round, and to make them get
down to contemplate the wonder.
But how should children, who see only the motley confusion of society,
where the heaviest sinks and the lightest lies on the top, avoid
regarding that which sinks as the worse of the two? Some say we are
all aristocrats by instinct. That is partly true, but it is none the
less an evil tendency, and we should avoid giving way to it. The
lower classes are really more democratic than the higher ones, for
they do not want to mount up to them, but only to attain to a certain
level; whence the assertion is commonly made that they wish to elevate
themselves.
Since there was now no longer physical work to do at home, John
lived exclusively an inner, unpractical life of imagination. He read
everything which fell into his hands.
On Wednesday or Saturday afternoon the eleven-year-old boy could be
seen in a dressing-gown and cap which his father had given him, with
a long tobacco-pipe in his mouth, his fingers stuck in his ears, and
buried in a book, preferably one about Indians. He had already read
five different versions of _Robinson Crusoe_, and derived an incredible
amount of delight from them. But in reading Campe's edition he had,
like all children, skipped the moralisings. Why do all children hate
moral applications? Are they immoral by nature? "Yes," answer modern
moralists, "for they are still animals, and do not recognise social
conventions." That is true, but the social law as taught to children
informs them only of their duties, not of their rights; it is therefore
unjust towards the child, and children hate injustice. Besides this,
he had arranged an herbarium, and made collections of insects and
minerals. He had also read Liljenblad's _Flora_, which he had found
in his father's bookcase. He liked this book better than the school
botany, because it contained a quantity of information regarding
the use of various plants, while the other spoke only of stamens and
pistils.
When his brothers deliberately disturbed him in reading, he would
run at them and threaten to strike them. They said his nerves were
overstrained. He dissolved the ties which bound him to the realities of
life, he lived a dream-life in foreign lands and in his own thoughts,
and was discontented with the grey monotony of everyday life and of his
surroundings, which ever became more uncongenial to him. His father,
however, would not leave him entirely to his own fancies, but gave him
little commissions to perform, such as fetching the paper and carrying
letters. These he looked upon as encroachments on his private life, and
always performed them unwillingly.
In the present day much is said about truth and truth-speaking as
though it were a difficult matter, which deserved praise. But, apart
from the question of praise, it is undoubtedly difficult to find out
the real facts about anything.
A person is not always what rumour reports him or her to be; a whole
mass of public opinion may be false; behind each thought there lurks
a passion; each judgment is coloured by prejudice. But the art
of separating fact from fancy is extremely difficult, _e.g._, six
newspaper reporters will describe a king's coronation robe as being of
six different colours. New ideas do not find ready entrance into brains
which work in a groove; elderly people believe only themselves, and the
uneducated believe that they can trust their own eyes. This, however,
owing to the frequency of optical illusions, is not the case.
In John's home truth was revered. His father was in the habit of
saying, "Tell the truth, happen what may," and used at the same time
to tell a story about himself. He had once promised a customer to send
home a certain piece of goods by a given day. He forgot it, but must
have had means of exculpating himself, for when the furious customer
came into the office and overwhelmed him with reproaches, John's father
humbly acknowledged his forgetfulness, asked for forgiveness, and
declared himself ready to make good the loss. The result was that the
customer was astonished, reached him his hand, and expressed his regard
for him. People engaged in trade, he said, must not expect too much of
each other.
Well! his father had a sound intelligence, and as an elderly man felt
sure of his conclusions.
John, who could never be without some occupation, had discovered that
one could profitably spend some time in loitering on the high-road
which led to and from school. He had once upon the Hollandergata, which
had no pavement, found an iron screw-nut. That pleased him, for it made
an excellent sling-stone when tied to a string. After that he always
walked in the middle of the street and picked up all the pieces of
iron which he saw. Since the streets were ill-paved and rapid driving
was forbidden, the vehicles which passed through them had a great deal
of rough usage. Accordingly an observant passer-by could be sure of
finding every day a couple of horse-shoe nails, a waggon-pin, or at any
rate a screw-nut, and sometimes a horse-shoe. John's favourite find was
screw-nuts which he had made his specialty. In the course of two months
he had collected a considerable quantity of them.
One evening he was playing with them when his father entered the room.
"What have you there?" he asked in astonishment.
"Screw-nuts," John answered confidently.
"Where did you get them from?"
"I found them."
"Found them? Where?"
"On the street."
"In one place?"
"No, in several--by walking down the middle of the street and looking
about."
"Look here! I don't believe that. You are lying. Come in here. I have
something to say to you." The something was a caning.
"Will you confess now?"
"I have found them on the street."
The cane was again plied in order to make him "confess." What should
he confess? Pain, and fear that the scene would continue indefinitely,
forced the following lie from him:
"I have stolen them."
"Where?"
Now he did not know to which part of a carriage the screw-nuts
belonged, but he guessed it was the under part.
"Under the carriages."
"Where?"
His fancy suggested a place, where many carriages used to stand
together. "By the timber-yard opposite the lane by the smith's."
This specification of the place lent an air of probability to his
story. His father was now certain that he had elicited the truth from
him. He continued:
"And how could you get them off merely with your fingers?"
He had not expected this question, but his eye fell on his father's
tool-box.
"With a screw-driver."
Now one cannot take hold of nuts with a screw-driver, but his father
was excited, and let himself be deceived.
"But that is abominable! You are really a thief. Suppose a policeman
had come by."
John thought for a moment of quieting him by telling him that the whole
affair was made up, but the prospect of getting another caning and no
supper held him mute. When he had gone to bed in the evening, and his
mother had come and told him to say his evening prayer, he said in a
pathetic tone and raising his hand:
"May the deuce take me, if I have stolen the screw-nuts."
His mother looked long at him, and then she said, "You should not swear
so."
The corporal punishment had sickened and humbled him; he was angry with
God, his parents, and especially his brothers, who had not spoken up
for him, though they knew the real state of the case. That evening he
did not say his prayers, but he wished that the house would take fire
without his having to light it. And then to be called a thief!
From that time he was suspected, or rather his bad reputation was
confirmed, and he felt long the sting of the memory of a charge of
theft which he had not committed. Another time he caught himself in a
lie, but through an inadvertency which for a long time he could not
explain. This incident is related for the consideration of parents.
A school-fellow with his sister came one Sunday morning in the early
part of the year to him and asked him whether he would accompany them
to the Haga Park. He said, "Yes," but he must first ask his mother's
permission. His father had gone out.
"Well, hurry up!" said his friend.
He wanted to show his herbarium, but the other said, "Let us go now."
"Very well, but I must first ask mother."
His little brother then came in and wanted to play with his herbarium.
He stopped the interruption and showed his friend his minerals. In the
meantime he changed his blouse. Then he took a piece of bread out of
the cupboard. His mother came and greeted his friends, and talked of
this and that domestic matter. John was in a hurry, begged his mother's
permission, and took his friends into the garden to see the frog-pond.
At last they went to the Haga Park. He felt quite sure that he had
asked his mother's leave to do so.
When his father came home, he asked John on his return, "Where have you
been?"
"With friends to the Haga Park."
"Did you have leave from mother?"
"Yes."
His mother denied it. John was dumb with astonishment.
"Ah, you are beginning to lie again."
He was speechless. He was quite sure he had asked his mother's leave,
especially as there was no reason to fear a refusal. He had fully meant
to do it, but other matters had intervened; he had forgotten, but was
willing to die, if he had told a lie. Children as a rule are afraid to
lie, but their memory is short, their impressions change quickly, and
they confuse wishes and resolves with completed acts. Meanwhile the boy
long continued to believe that his mother had told a falsehood. But
later, after frequent reflections on the incident, he came to think
she had forgotten or not heard his request. Later on still he began to
suspect that his memory might have played him a trick. But he had been
so often praised for his good memory, and there was only an interval of
two or three hours between his going to the Haga Park and his return.
His suspicions regarding his mother's truthfulness (and why should she
not tell an untruth, since women so easily confuse fancies and facts?)
were shortly afterwards confirmed. The family had bought a set of
furniture--a great event. The boys just then happened to be going to
their aunt's. Their mother still wished to keep the novelty a secret
and to surprise her sister on her next visit. Therefore she asked the
children not to speak of the matter. On their arrival at their aunt's,
the latter asked at once:
"Has your mother bought the yellow furniture?"
His brothers were silent, but John answered cheerfully, "No."
On their return, as they sat at table, their mother asked, "Well, did
aunt ask about the furniture?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said 'No,'" answered John.
"So, then, you dared to lie," interrupted his father.
"Yes, mother said so," the boy answered.
His mother turned pale, and his father was silent. This in itself
was harmless enough, but, taken in connection with other things, not
without significance. Slight suspicions regarding the truthfulness of
"others" woke in the boy's mind and made him begin to carry on a silent
siege of adverse criticism. His coldness towards his father increased,
he began to have a keen eye for instances of oppression, and to make
small attempts at revolt.
The children were marched to church every Sunday; and the family had
a key to their pew. The absurdly long services and incomprehensible
sermons soon ceased to make any impression. Before a system of heating
was introduced, it was a perfect torture to sit in the pew in winter
for two hours at a stretch with one's feet freezing; but still they
were obliged to go, whether for their souls' good, or for the sake of
discipline, or in order to have quiet in the house--who knows? His
father personally was a theist, and preferred to read Wallin's sermons
to going to church. His mother began to incline towards pietism.
One Sunday the idea occurred to John, possibly in consequence of an
imprudent Bible exposition at school, which had touched upon freedom of
the spirit, or something of the sort, not to go to church. He simply
remained at home. At dinner, before his father came home, he declared
to his brothers and sisters and aunts that no one could compel the
conscience of another, and that therefore he did not go to church. This
seemed original, and therefore for this once he escaped a caning, but
was sent to church as before.
* * * * *