"Have you," he said, "really spent your time in studying such nonsense ?" I replied in the affirmative.

"Every minute," continued M.Krempe with warmth, "every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost.

You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names.

Good God! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient?
I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus.

My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew." So saying, he stepped aside and wrote down a list of several books treating of natural philosophy which he desired me to procure, and dismissed me after mentioning that in the beginning of the following week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural philosophy in its general relations, and that M.Waldman, a fellow professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he omitted.
I returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape.