If an intelligent man of the upper class help in such an operation, those below should be thankful to him especially since such an act is liable to the imputation of being inspired by impure motives. Therefore the lower class should not too narrowly inspect the motives of those who help them; the result is in all eases the same. The aristocrats seem to have seen this and therefore regard one of themselves who sides with the proletariat as a traitor. He is a traitor to his class, that is true; and the lower class should put it to his credit.
John was not an aristocrat in the sense that he used the word "mob" or despised the poor. Through his mother he was closely allied to them, but circumstances had estranged him from them. That was the fault of class-education. This fault might be done away with for the future, if elementary schools were reformed by the inclusion of the knowledge of civil duties in their programme, and by their being made obligatory for all, without exception, as the militia-schools are. Then it would be no longer a disgrace to become an elementary school-teacher as it now is, and made a matter of reproach to a man that he has been one.
John, in order to keep himself above, applied himself to his future work. To this end he studied Italian grammar in his spare time at the school. He could now buy books and did so. He was honest enough not to construe these efforts at climbing up as an ideal thirst for knowledge or a striving for the good of humanity. He simply read for his degree.
But the meagre diet he had lived on in Upsala, his midday meals at 6 kronas, the milk and the bread had undermined his strength, and he was now in the pleasure-seeking period of youth. It was tedious at home, and in the afternoons he went to the café or the restaurant, where he met friends. Strong drinks invigorated him and he slept well after them. The desire for alcohol seems to appear regularly in each adolescent. All northerners are born of generations of drinkers from the early heathen times, when beer and mead was drunk, and it is quite natural that this desire should be felt as a necessity. With John it was an imperious need the suppression of which resulted in a diminution of strength. It may be questioned whether abstinence for us may not involve the same risk, as the giving up of poison for an arsenic-eater. Probably the otherwise praiseworthy temperance movement will merely end in demanding moderation; that is a virtue and not a mere exhibition of will power which results in boasting and self-righteousness.