as may be inferred from his treatment of Peter the Great.  But the aged baronet had had his own way so long, and was so well pleased with it, that he would have nothing to do with Linnaeus.  At Oxford the learned professor Dillenius received him with no better grace.  “This,” he said aside to a friend, “is the young man who confounds all botany,” and he took him rather reluctantly into his garden.  A plant that was new to him attracted Linnaeus’ attention and he asked to what family it belonged.

“That is more than you can tell me,” was the curt answer.

“I can, if you will let me pluck a flower and examine it.”

“Do, and be welcome,” said the professor, and his visitor after a brief glance at the flower told its species correctly.  The professor stared.

“Now,” said Linnaeus, who had kept his eyes open, “what did you mean by the crosses you had put all through my book?” He had seen it lying on the professor’s table, all marked up.

“They mark the errors you made,” declared the other.

“Suppose we see about that,” said the younger man and, taking the book, led the way.  They examined the flowers together, and when they returned to the study all the pride had gone out of the professor.  He kept Linnaeus with him a month, never letting him out of his sight and, when he left, implored him with tears to stay and share his professorship; the pay was enough for both.

A letter that reached him from home on his return to Holland made him realize with a start that he had overstayed his leave.  It was now in the fourth year since he had left Sweden.  All the while he had written to his sweetheart in the care of a friend who proved false.  He wanted her for himself and, when the three years had passed, told her that Carl would never come back.  Dr. Moraeus was of the same mind, and had not a real friend of the absent lover turned up in the nick of time Linnaeus would probably have stayed a Dutchman to his death.  Now, on the urgent message of his friend, he hastened home, found his Elisabeth holding out yet, married her and settled down in Stockholm to practise medicine.

Famous as he had become, he found the first stretch of the row at home a hard one to hoe.  His books brought him no income.  Nobody would employ him, “even for a sick servant,” he complained.  Envious rivals assailed him and his botany, and there were days when herring and black bread was fare not to be despised in Dr. Linnaeus’ household.  But he kept pegging away and his luck changed.  One well-to-do patient brought another, and at last the queen herself was opportunely seized with a bad cough.  She saw one of her ladies take a pill and asked what it was.  Dr. Linnaeus’ prescription for a cold, she said, and it always cured her right up.  So the doctor was called to the castle and his cure worked there, too.  Not long after that he set down in his diary that “Now, no one can get well without my help.”