opposite the Slesvig Stone, the first and dearest type of landscape
beauty with which I became acquainted, was endowed to me with an imprint
of actuality which no other landscape since, be it never so lovely or
never so imposing, has ever been able to acquire.


VIII.

The instruction at school was out of date, inasmuch as, in every branch,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 Joergen
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,