He talked with his father about his new hobby, and the latter, who had himself studied electricity in his youth, lent him books from his bookcase—Fock's Physics, Girardin's Chemistry, Figuier's Discoveries and Inventions, and the Chemical Technology of Nyblæus. In the attic was also a galvanic battery constructed on the old Daniellian copper and zinc system. This he got hold of when he was twelve years old, and made so many experiments with sulphuric acid as to ruin handkerchiefs, napkins, and clothes. After he had galvanised everything which seemed a suitable object, he laid this hobby also aside. During the summer he took up privately the study of chemistry with enthusiasm. But he did not wish to carry out the experiments described in the text-book; he wished to make discoveries. He had neither money nor any chemical apparatus, but that did not hinder him. He had a temperament which must carry out its projects in spite of every difficulty, and on the spot. This was still more the case, since he had become his own master, after his mother's death. When he played chess, he directed his plan of campaign against his opponent's king. He went on recklessly, without thinking of defending himself, sometimes gained the victory by sheer recklessness, but frequently also lost the game.
"If I had had one move more, you would have been checkmated," he said on such occasions.
"Yes, but you hadn't, and therefore you are checkmated," was the answer.
When he wished to open a locked drawer, and the key was not at hand, he took the tongs and broke the lock, so that, together with its screws, it came loose from the wood.
"Why did you break the lock?" they asked.
"Because I wished to get at the drawer."
This impetuosity revealed a certain pertinacity, but the latter only lasted while the fit was on him. For example: On one occasion he wished to make an electric machine. In the attic he found a spinning-wheel. From it he broke off whatever he did not need, and wanted to replace the wheel with a round pane of glass. He found a double window, and with a splinter of quartz cut a pane out. But it had to be round and have a whole in the middle. With a key he knocked off one splinter of glass after another, each not larger than a grain of sand, this took him several days, but at last he had made the pane round. But how was he to make a hole in it? He contrived a bow-drill. In order to get the bow, he broke an umbrella, took a piece of whale-bone out, and with that and a violin-string made his bow. Then he rubbed the glass with the splinter of quartz, wetted it with turpentine, and bored. But he saw no result. Then he lost patience and reflection, and tried to finish the job with a piece of cracking-coal. The pane of glass split in two. Then he threw himself, weak, exhausted, hopeless, on the bed. His vexation was intensified by a consciousness of poverty. If he had only had money. He walked up and down before Spolander's shop in the Vesterlanggata and looked at the various sets of chemical apparatus there displayed. He would have gladly ascertained their price, but dared not go in. What would have been the good? His father gave him no money.
When he had recovered from this failure, he wanted to make what no one has made hitherto, and no one can make—a machine to exhibit "perpetual motion." His father had told him that for a long time past a reward had been offered to anyone who should invent this impossibility. This tempted him. He constructed a waterfall with a "Hero's fountain,"[1] which worked a pump; the waterfall was to set the pump in motion, and the pump was to draw up the water again out of the "Hero's fountain." He had again to make a raid on the attic. After he had broken everything possible in order to collect material, he began his work. A coffee-making machine had to serve as a pipe; a soda-water machine as a reservoir; a chest of drawers furnished planks and wood; a bird-cage, iron wire; and so on. The day of testing it came. Then the housekeeper asked him if he would go with his brothers and sisters to their mother's grave. "No," he said, "he had no time." Whether his conscience now smote him, and spoiled his work, or whether he was nervous—anyhow, it was a failure. Then he took the whole apparatus, without trying to put right what was wrong in it, and hurled it against the tiled stove. There lay the work, on which so many useful things had been wasted, and a good while later on the ruin was discovered in the attic. He received a reproof, but that had no longer an effect on him.
In order to have his revenge at home, where he was despised on account of his unfortunate experiments, he made some explosions with detonating gas, and contrived a Leyden jar. For this he took the skin of a dead black cat which he had found on the Observatory Hill and brought home in his pocket-handkerchief. One night, when his eldest brother and he came home from a concert, they could find no matches, and did not wish to wake anyone. John hunted up some sulphuric acid and zinc, produced hydrogen, procured a flame by means of the electricity conductor, and lighted the lamp. This established his reputation as a scientific chemist. He also manufactured matches like those made at Jönkoping. Then he laid chemistry aside for a time.
His father's bookshelves contained a small collection of books which were now at his disposal. Here, besides the above-mentioned works on chemistry and physics, he found books on gardening, an illustrated natural history, Meyer's Universum, a German anatomical treatise with plates, an illustrated German history of Napoleon, Wallin's, Franzen's, and Tegner's poems, Don Quixote, Frederika Bremer's romances, etc.