Daily Speculations The Web Site of Victor Niederhoffer & Laurel Kenner Dedicated to the scientific method, free markets, deflating ballyhoo, creating value, and laughter;  a forum for us to use our meager abilities to make the world of specinvestments a better place.

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Laurel
Kenner

6/28/05
A Niederhoffer in History, by Laurel Kenner

In keeping with my practice of reading all I can on the history, economy and art of places I visit, I bought a sun-faded book called The Bull of Minos from a rack outdoors in the small Cretan village of Krista. It's an account, first published half a century ago, of the excavations in Troy, Mycenae and Knossos by Henrich Schliemann and Arthur Evans.

When I reached the passage that appears below, I started to smile. Other readers will recognize in it, if not the denomination and the inebriation, the scholarly bent and catalytic role in others' lives:

[Heinrich Schliemann] had to leave school at the age of fourteen and become an apprentice in a grocer's shop in the small town of Furstenberg. 'I was engaged,' he wrote, 'from five in the morning until eleven at night, and had not a moment's leisure for study. Moreover, I rapidly forgot the little that I had learnt in childhood; but I did not lose the love of learning; indeed I never lost it, and, as long as I live, I shall never forget the evening when a drunken miller came into the shop.' The miller, whose name was Niederhoffer, was a failed Protestant clergyman who had taken to drink, which, however, 'had not made him forget his Homer; for on the evening that he entered the shop he recited to us about a hundred lines of the poet observing the rhythmic cadence of the verses. Although I did not understand a syllable, the melodious sound of the words made a deep impression on me. From that moment I never ceased to pray to God that by His grace I might someday have the happiness of learning Greek.'

Schliemann went on to amass a huge fortune as a trader in Russia, California and elsewhere. By the age of 33, he spoke 15 languages, including modern and ancient Greek.

My opinion is that the miller wasn't drunk, just... exuberant.