Daily Kennebec journal., 1877-07-12
NO. 1853
Gales and Skftehss.
THE LIGHTING OF A MATCH.

A few years ago l was student at
German university. What happy days
those were in that queer old town, with
its long street and diverging alleys. its
simple and kindly burghers, and its COM
Portable. cosy gossiping, social life As
| look back on that, it seems to have been
an ideal existence of careless joyousness,
made up Of all that infinite variety of hap
piness which only the strong magnetism
of untried youth can draw together. Was
it really so perfect, or is it, after all, mere
ly another instance of retrospective hap
piness-that kind we all have felt yet nev-
er feel? But why try to analyze it? Real
or imaginary, it is an enough that is came
to an end.
1t had originally been my intention to
leave the town in August, at the end of
the summer term, but VIXEN the time came
had not the heart to go. The days. and
| weeks, and months slipped on, and still
| fingered. The Indian summer-the old
woman's summer, as tbs Germans call it
was wonderfully beautiful that year,
covering with its soft and deceitful love-
| illness, the rapid flight of time. But even
1t came to an end at last, Looking out
of my window one morning, l found
thin sheet of snow on the ground, and
all that day the mOnotonous gray of the
| wintry sky formed a background for q
| succession of black and screaming trian-
giles moving southwark. realized then
that it was more than time for me to imi-
tate the birds of passage and migrate
| not like them to SUMMER climes, but to
little nest of village high up among the
mountains, where had planned to isolate
| myself from civilization and "cram" for an
examination in the spring. So / bade
| good-by to my friends and to my Jolly
| students career, and quietly dropped out
of the stream of social life. at
During the long, dreary lonely winter
months that followed, led the life of
| studous hermit. 1t was grind. grind,
| grind, from early in the morning till late
INTO the night. Finance and political
economy; history and philosophy, dates
| and figures, and definitions, all went pell-
nell into the mill to be ground up into an
swers to a board of Socratic professors,
whose only pleasure in life was to put
puZzlers to the unhappy wretch before
them. OF course, did wrongly in thus
secluding myself; ,of course, L ought to
have remembered how incessant labor
/ affected the mind of the historical John !;
of course, it was all a mistake from be-
ginning to end. But the tradition Of the
university sternly dictated such course
10 the "crammer," and l was too young,
and too inexperienced to enable me to de-
fly her mandate with success.
So when spring came, and those horr:-
BILE ideas of March drew near, was in no
condition to go forth and meet my fate
with courage. Indeed, doubt if the i'm
mortal Caesar himself would have met his
so stoically if railroads had existed in those
days TO whirl him inexorabiy toward it at
the rate of thirty miles an hour.
l was depressed and miserable, unwell
in body, sick in mind, full of wretched
fore-bodings, and despairing, heart-sick-
ening distrust of myself, when one shiv-
ering day in March, l mounted the train
shat was to bare me to Berlin-the seat
Of the inquisitorial board to whose tor
lures was about voluntarily to surrender
myself. Never in all my life was there q
time when wanted less to be alone, yet
with the perversity of low spirits took
place in one of the irst-class carriages in
which, according to the German saying.
only Englishmen and fools ever travel.
As it happened, there were no Englishmen
passing along this route, and, no one
getting into the compartment but myself,
l was constrained to draw the inference
that was the only fool on the train. Be
that as it may, my thoughts were my only
companions during the whole ride. And
charming companions they were, as he
knows full well who has ever enjoyed such
society on the eve of an examination! In
the course of half dozen hours / had
mentally passed through as many strug-
giles with the professional board as cow
and dies deaths before his final dissolution.
OF course. in these struggles l was regu-
larly thrown; and as Mother Nature has
not particularly endowed me with Ant@us-
like characteristics, life, under the cir
cumstances, soon became a wretchedly
farcical affair-so much so, that L most
sincerely hoped the train would find con-
venient precipce to glide off of. How
many travellers have longed for this same
misfortunel What train ever sped along
its iron track that did not contain at least
one man who, il his wishes had been
realized and known as they were thought.
would have had his name handed down to
posterity as that of railroad tiendl"
In justice to myself, l think there was
more excuse for my egotistical misantho-
py than can generally be advanced in such
cases. A person who for half day has
been counting off historical dates on the
telegraph poles that he leaves behind him
at the rate of thirty miles an hour, who
has varied this operation by putting to
himself and trying to answer such ques-
tions as "How does credit affect prices PH
or lis payment for capital sunk in the
soil, rent, or profit ~ and who does all
this while an abandoned philosophical
carmagnole is going on in his brain, with
Comte and Fichte and Kant, as chief
dancers--such a person. l affirm, is enti.
tied to little forbearance if. in the Sec
onds he can snatch from such distractions,
he thinks thoughts and wishes wishes not
strictly compatible with a high sense OF
unselfishness and philanthropy.
But why think continually of the exam
ination' Could you not, by an effort or
will, fix your mind on something else
No could not, Herr Gemeinplats. nor
could you have either had you been in my
Iplace. 1t is demoniacal but eternal law
that. hard as the real examination may
be. 1t will be at least as easy as the pre-.
liminary self-examins.ion of the candidate.
The universe, under such circumstances.
resolves itself into n committee of the