e
had taken in wider and more extensive views, and a larger standard of
measurement had unconsciously been made his own.

He saw the old forms at the station, he saw the university-simpleton,
which every smaller university has, who grinned at the doctor, and bade
him welcome. He saw the students with their caps of various colors, who
were amusing themselves with making passes in the air with their canes,
and playing with their dogs. All this seemed to him like a forgotten
dream. And how was this? Had it not formerly been his highest desire to
live and to teach here?

He went through the town,--nowhere anything pleasing to the eye; all
was narrow, angular, contracted. He came to the paternal mansion;
the narrow, wooden steps seemed to him so steep; he entered the
sitting-room. No one was there. Mother and aunt had gone out. He went
into his father's library: the books, formerly arranged in such good
order, and which, hitherto, no one had ventured to disturb, were lying,
for the most part, upon the floor; a tall, lean man, looking over the
spectacles on the tip of his nose, stood staring at him with surprise.

Eric introduced himself; the man took the spectacles in his hand, and
gave as his name that of a well-known antiquary in the capital, who had
come to purchase the library.

So his mother's hope was gone, thought Eric. He remarked to the
antiquary how valuable his father's annotations were, which were to be
found on almost every page of every book.

The antiquary shrugging his shoulders, replied that these comments were
valueless, and that they even detracted from the value of the books. If
his father had written a great book, which gave him a great reputation,
these notes would then have value; but his father had all his life been
intending to write a great work, but had never accomplished it; and so
all the notes and comments, even if valuable in themselves, were for
the antiquary a depreciation in the worth of the books.

The tears came into Eric's eyes, already excited as he was by what he
had gone through.

The whole labor of his father's life was not only to be lost, but to be
worse than lost. Here was no leaf on which the eye of the sleeping one
had not rested, here were his private thoughts, his feelings and his
rich wisdom, and this was to be flung away into the world, despised,
and perhaps appropriated by some stranger for his own profit.

Eric blamed himself for not accepting decidedly and immedia