Not until twenty years later did they begin to grow it for
food in Sweden.
When Carl Linnaeus went up to Upsala University, his parents had so
far got over their disappointment at his deserting the ministry that
they gave him a little money to make a start with; but they let him
know that no more was coming--their pocket-book was empty. And
within the twelvemonth, for all his scrimping and saving, he was on
the point of starvation. He tells us himself that he depended on
chance for a meal and wore his fellow students' cast-off clothes.
His boots were without soles, and in his cheerless attic room he
patched them with birch bark and card board as well as he could. He
was now twenty-three years old, and it seemed as if he would have to
give up the study that gave him no bread; but still he clung to his
beloved flowers. They often made him forget the pangs of hunger. And
when the cloud was darkest the sun broke through. He was sitting in
the Botanical Garden sketching a plant, when Dean Celsius, a great
orientalist and theologian of his day, passed by. The evident
poverty of the young man, together with his deep absorption in his
work, arrested his attention; he sat down and talked with him. In
five minutes Carl had found a friend and the Dean a helper.
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