The Growth of a Soul

John and his friend Fritz hired a room in the Klostergr_nden. It contained two beds, two tables, two chairs and a cupboard. The rent was 30 kronas a term,„15 kronas each. Their midday meal was brought by the servant for 12 kronas a month,„6 kronas each. For breakfast and supper they had a glass of milk and some bread and butter. That was all. They bought wood in the market,„a small bundle for 4 kronas. John had also received a bottle of petroleum from home as a present, and he could send his washing to Stockholm. He had 80 kronas in his table-drawer with which to meet all the expenses of the term.

It was a new and peculiar society into which he now entered, quite unlike any other. It had privileges like the old house of peers and a jurisdiction of its own; but it was a "little Pedlington" and reeked of rusticity. All the professors were country-born; not a single one hailed from Stockholm. The houses and streets were like those of Nyk_ping. And it was here that the head-quarters of culture had been placed, owing to an inconsistency of the government which certainly regarded Stockholm as answering to that description.