But he was not dreaming only. Being a quick observer of things surrounding him, we may infer that he was deeply impressed by the customs and manners of the peasants among whom he lived, their cool, unobtrusive way of behaving themselves, their sound judgment, their manual cleverness, their traditions, songs and fairy tales, and last but not least, their dialect, with its peculiar words and phrases, so decidedly different from his own Bergen tongue and way of speaking. Indeed, numerous passages in his works are stamped by obvious reminiscences from his Fron sojourn. After an absence which, in more respects than one, ripened him above his age, Holberg, in 1698, returned to Bergen, where he resumed his studies under conditions which did not please him at all. During his absence the grammar school of the city had been subjected to a thorough reform by an able manager, who was himself an ardent admirer of the classics. Accordingly, Latin more than ever became the chief subject of instruction, the command of the language being laboriously aimed at by means of disputations which were at once linguistic exercises and a medium of theological and metaphysical fencing. Holberg, who always felt himself alien to subtleties of this kind, was therefore quite agreeable when very soon after the heavy fire at Bergen in 1702, which stands out as one of the most remarkable events in the annals of the city, he was sent to the University of Copenhagen, where he passed his B.A. examination. He does not seem to have been favourably impressed in any particular degree either by the capital itself or by the conditions ruling at the University. Otherwise, in his reminiscences he would hardly have passed by his life as a student in absolute silence; on the other hand, Bergen, as she presented herself to him towards the end of 1702 after he had been away for some seven or eight months, was certainly no cheery place, being still under the gloom of the devastations of the fire. He therefore quite naturally availed himself of the earliest opportunity of getting away. The two following years of his life, but for a short stay at Copenhagen, where he completed his theological studies and attained a high degree, he spent chiefly "in flogging his pupils and converting Norwegian boors." This is a humorous expression of his for the way in which he performed his duties as a tutor to the children of the vicar at Voss--now one of the best-known districts on the Bergen-Christiania Railway--and occasionally replaced him in the pulpit. By his own saying he succeeded decidedly better as a preacher than as a tutor which, by the way, does not say very much, as he never excelled in either of these functions. The chief interest connected with his stay at Voss is the fact that it strengthened his early Fron recollections of the peasants.