curtain of forgetfulness.

Ah! when I think how, at home in Nordland, I pictured to myself the
king's palace in Kristiania, with pinnacles and towers standing out
grandly over the town, and the king's men like a golden stream from the
castle court right up to the throne-room; or Akershus fortress, when the
thundering cannon announce the king's arrival, and the air is filled
with martial music and mighty royal commands; when I think how I
pictured to myself "the high hall of light," the University, as a great
white chalk mountain, always with the sunshine on its windowpanes; or
how I imagined the Storthing [Norwegian parliament] Hall, and the men
who frequent it, whose names, magnified by fancy, echoed up to us, as
though for each one there rang through the air a mighty resounding bell,
names like Foss, Sörenssen, Jonas Anton Hjelm, Schweigaard, and many
others; when I compare what I, up in the north, imagined about all this,
with the "for our small conditions--most respectable reality," in which
I now live and move--it is like a card-castle of illusions, as high as
Snehætten, [Snehætten--a mountain in the Dovre range, 7400 feet high.]
falling over me. Until I was over twenty years of age, I lived only in a
northern fairyland, and I am now for the first time born into the world
of reality: I have been spell-bound in my own fancy.

If I were to tell any one all this, he would certainly--and the more
sensible the man was the more surely--be of opinion that my good Examen
Artium [Artium--an examination to be passed before admittance to the
University is granted.] must clearly have come about by some mistake.
But if life depends on theoretical reasoning and knowledge, I have,
thank God, as good abilities as most men. And I know that in them I have
a pair of pliant oars, with which, as long as I require to do so, I
shall be able to row my boat through practical life without running