Anthony then cried again; for he thought that he should lose
his companion, and then not know how to help himself any more: and yet
he had ten crowns secretly about him, and I not a halfpenny. When we
came into the town, and had found lodging in the house of an aged
married couple, of whom the man was stone blind, we went to the
preceptor, Mr. John Sapidus, and begged of him to receive us. He asked
us whence we came; when we said, "From Switzerland, from. St. Gall." He
said, "There are wicked peasants there; they drive all their bishops
away out of the country. If you intend to study properly you need not
give me any thing; but if not, you must pay me, or I will pull your
coats off your back." That was the first school which seemed to me to
go on well. At that time the study of languages and sciences came into
fashion. It was the same year that the diet was held at Worms. Sapidus
had at one time nine hundred scholars, amongst whom were several fine
learned fellows, who afterwards became celebrated men. When I entered
the school I could do nothing, not even read the Donatus,[3] and was
nevertheless already eighteen years old. I seated myself among the
little children, but was like the clucking hen among the chickens. When
we had been there from Autumn till Whitsuntide, and there was a
continual influx of scholars from all quarters, I was no longer able to
procure sustenance for us both; we therefore went away to Solothurn,
where there was a tolerably good school, and also a maintenance easier
to be found. But as a set-off against this, we had to stay much in
church, and lose time: so we went again to our native place, where I
remained awhile, and went to school to a priest who taught me a little
writing, and other things I know not what. Here I got the ague, and was
nursed by my aunt Frances in Grenchen. At the same time I taught the
little son of my other aunt, Simon Steiner, his A B C. He came to
Zurich a year after, and studied by degrees: then he came to Strasburg,
where he became Dr. Bucer's Famulus: and because he was attentive to
his studies, he was made teacher of the thirds and afterwards of the
second, class; and was very much regretted by the scholars at Strasburg
when he died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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