He adjusts his shoes with their gaping wounds, shakes the dust from his cap, and then takes from his pack a faded neckscarf, puts it on and he is ready.
Descending the hill he forgets his lameness, waives the stone-bruises, and walks confidently to the Botanical Garden, which he views with a critical eye. Next, he inquires for the General Superintendent who lives near. The young man presents his credentials from Rothman, who describes the youth as one who knows and loves the flowers, and who can be useful in office or garden and is not above spade and hoe. The Superintendent looks at the pink face, touched with bronze from days in the open air, notes the long yellow hair, beholds the out-of-door look of fortitude that comes from hard and plain fare, and inwardly compares these things with the lack of them in some of his students. "But this Doctor--Doctor Rothman who wrote this letter--I do not have the honor of knowing him," says the Superintendent.
"Ah, you are unfortunate," replies the youth; "he is a very great man, and I myself will vouch for him in every way."
Oh! this glowing confidence of youth--before there comes a surplus of lime in the bones, or the touch of winter in the heart! The Superintendent smiled. Knock in faith and the door shall be opened--there are those whom no one can turn away. A stray bed was found in the garret for the stranger, and the next morning he was earnestly at work cataloguing the dried plants in the herbarium, a task long delayed because there was no one to do it.
The study of Natural History in the University of Upsala was, at this time, at a low ebb. It was like the Art Department in many of the American colleges: its existence largely confined to the school catalog. There were many weeks of biting poverty and neglect for Linnæus, but he worked away in obscurity and silence and endured, saying all the time, "The sun will come out, the sun will come out!" Doctor Olaf Rudbeck had charge of the chair of Botany, but seldom sat in it. His business was medicine. He gave no lectures, but the report was that he made his students toil at cultivating in his garden--this to open up their intellectual pores. In the course of his work, Linnæus devised a sex plan of classification, instead of the so-called natural method. He wrote out his ideas and submitted them to Rudbeck.