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Tales from Two Hemispheres by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
page 6 of 275 (02%)

If this had been the fate of our friend Bjerk,
we should have dismissed him here with a confident
"vale" on his life's pilgrimage. But,
unfortunately, Bjerk was inclined to hold the
government in some way responsible for his own
poor success as a student, and this, in connection
with an aesthetic enthusiasm for ancient Greece,
gradually convinced him that the republic was
the only form of government under which men
of his tastes and temperament were apt to flourish.
It was, like everything that pertained to
him, a cheerful, genial conviction, without the
slightest tinge of bitterness. The old institutions
were obsolete, rotten to the core, he said,
and needed a radical renovation. He could sit
for hours of an evening in the Students' Union,
and discourse over a glass of mild toddy, on the
benefits of universal suffrage and trial by jury,
while the picturesqueness of his language, his
genial sarcasms, or occasional witty allusions
would call forth uproarious applause from
throngs of admiring freshmen. These were the
sunny days in Halfdan's career, days long to be
remembered. They came to an abrupt end
when old Mrs. Bjerk died, leaving nothing
behind her but her furniture and some trifling
debts. The son, who was not an eminently
practical man, underwent long hours of misery
in trying to settle up her affairs, and finally in
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