A student's room, as he grows up, is a reflection of himself; it is a kind of dissolving view, in which the one set of objects and books fades gradually away as his opinions form themselves, and as he collects about him the works that are really of interest to him, as distinguished from those with which he has been obliged to occupy himself prior to taking his academic steps.

Then, as in the human frame every particle of bone and sinew is said to change in seven years, the student one day looks about him and recognises that hardly a book or a paper is there of all the store over which he was busied in those months before he took his degree, or sustained his disputation.

When a man has entered on his career, if he enters on it with a will, he soon finds that all books and objects not essential as tools for his work creep stealthily into the dusty corner, or to the inaccessible top shelf of the bookcase,--or if he is very poor, to the second-hand bookshop.

He cannot afford to be hampered by any dead weight.
Now Dr.Claudius had gone through many changes of thought and habit since he came to Heidelberg ten years ago.

But he had never changed his quarters; for he loved the garret window and the isolation from visits and companions that he gained by his three flights of stairs.