The Facts of Life

A bright-eyed student recalls his first day at the Springville Free Academy, where the legendary Professor Melchizedek Hobbs commands the classroom with the fervor of a Victorian orator. He equates education to the natural instincts of animals, insisting that wisdom passed from parent to offspring is the true hallmark of humanity. Hobbs’s lectures on botany and zoology are as theatrical as they are scholarly, and his passion for the living world ignites a restless curiosity in every listener.

The narrator follows Hobbs into fields and forests, chasing butterflies, beetles, and rare ferns while the professor’s “painfully erudite” ramblings shape a lifelong love of discovery. Years later, after graduation, Hobbs opens a modest greenhouse‑lab, and the former pupil keeps in touch, sending exotic specimens. A mysterious Zulu rose from a Madagascar expedition hints at the next chapter of adventure, promising more wonders for those who share Hobbs’s insatiable hunger for knowledge.