"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.