The good clergyman, in the course of his conversation with the doctor, told of his mortification on account of the dulness and perversity of his son. Doctor Rothman listened in patience and came to the conclusion that young Mr. Linnaeus was a good boy who did the wrong thing. All energy is God's, but it may be misdirected. A boy not good enough for a preacher might make a good doctor--an excess of virtue is not required in the recipe for a physician. "I'll cure you, by taking charge of your boy," said Rothman; "you want to make a clergyman of the youth: I'll let him be just what he wants to be, a naturalist and a physician." And it was so. * * * * * The year spent by Linnaeus under the roof of Doctor Rothman was a pivotal point in his life. He was eighteen years old. The contempt of Rothman for the refinements of education appealed to the young man. Rothman was blunt, direct, and to the point: he had a theory that people grew by doing what they wanted to do, not by resisting their impulses. He was both friend and comrade to the boy. They rode together, dissected animals and plants, and the young man assisted in operations. Linnaeus had the run of the Doctor's library, and without knowing it, was mastering physiology. "I would adopt him as my son," said Rothman; "but I love him so much that I am going to separate him from me. My roots have struck deep in the soil: I am like the human trees told of by Dante; but the boy can go on!" And so Rothman sent him along to the University of Lund, with letters to another doctor still more cranky than himself. This man was Doctor Kilian Stobaeus, a medical professor, physician to the king, and a naturalist of note. Stobaeus had a mixed-up museum of minerals, birds, fishes and plants. Everybody for a hundred miles who had a curious thing in the way of natural history sent it to Stobaeus. Into this medley of strange and curious things Linnaeus was plunged with orders to "straighten it up." There was a German student also living with the doctor, working for his board. Linnaeus took the lead and soon had the young German helping him catalog the curios. The spirit of Ray had gotten abroad in Germany, and Ray's books had been translated and were being used in many of the German schools. Linnaeus made a bargain with the German student that they should speak only German--he wanted to find what was locked up in those German books on botany.