rs been preparing himself in vain for the examen
philosophicum, he found himself slowly and imperceptibly drifting into
the ranks of the so-called studiosi perpetui, who preserve a solemn
silence at the examination tables, fraternize with every new generation
of freshmen, and at last become part of the fixed furniture of their
Alma Mater. In the larger American colleges, such men are mercilessly
dropped or sent to a Divinity School; but the European universities,
whose tempers the centuries have mellowed, harbor in their spacious
Gothic bosoms a tenderer heart for their unfortunate sons. There the
professors greet them at the green tables with a good-humored smile of
recognition; they are treated with gentle forbearance, and are allowed
to linger on, until they die or become tutors in the families of remote
clergymen, where they invariably fall in love with the handsomest
daughter, and thus lounge into a modest prosperity.

If this had been the fate of our friend Bjerk, we should have dismissed
him here with a confident "vale" on his life's pilgrimage. But,
unfortunately, Bjerk was inclined to hold the government in some
way responsible for his own poor success as a student, and this, in
connection with an aesthetic enthusiasm for ancient Greece, gradually
convinced him that the republic was the only form of government under
which men of his tastes and temperament were apt to flourish. It was,
like everything that pertained to him, a cheerful, genial conviction,
without the slightest tinge of bitterness. The old institutions were
obsolete, rotten to the core, he said, and needed a radical renovation.
He could sit for hours of an evening in the Students' Union, and
discourse over a glass of mild toddy, on the benefits of universal
suffrage and trial by jury, while the picturesqueness of his language,
his genial sarcasms, or occasional witty allusions would call forth
uproarious applause from throngs of admiring freshmen. These were the
sunny days in Halfdan's career, days long to be remembered. They came to
an abrupt end when old Mrs. Bjerk died, leaving nothing behind her but
her furniture and some trifling debts. The son, who was not an eminently
practical man, underwent long hours of misery in trying to settle up her
affairs, and finally in a moment of extreme dejection sold his entire
inheritance in a lump to a pawnbroker (reserving for himself a few rings
and trinkets) for the modest sum of 250 dollars specie. He the