..
marks of proficiency, attendance at class went by the board. My studying
was rather browsing among the multitudes of books in the college
library. I passed hours, back in the stacks, forgetting day and night
... recitations ... meals....
I was soon in trouble with my professors ... I was always up, and even
ahead, with my studies, but I was a disrupting influence for the other
students, because of my irregularity.
I discovered wonderful books back there in the "stack" ... the works of
Paracelsus, who whispered me that wisdom was to be found more in the
vagabond bye-ways of life than in the ordered and regulated highways.
That the true knowledge was to be garnered from knocking about with
vagrants, gipsies, carriers ... from corners in wayside inns where
travellers discoursed....
And there was Boehmen, the inspired German shoemaker, who was visited
by an angel, or some sort of divine stranger, and given his first
illumination outside his shop ... and later walked a-field and heard
what the flowers were saying to each other, seeing through all creation
at one glance, crystal-clear.
And there were the unusual poets ... old Matthew Prior, who wrote
besides his poems, the Treaty, was it, of Utrecht?... hobnobbed with the
big people of the land ... yet refused all marks of honour ... the best
Latinist of the day ... at a time when Latin was the diplomatic language
of Europe.
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