In order to investigate how a 19th century mathematical textbook (in contrast to a contemporary one) would be experienced by a novice reader, we embarked on the following project: In the summer of 2013, a student with no previous training in college-level mathematics (the first author) set out to learn projective geometry from Pasch\u27s 1882 textbook Lectures on Modern Geometry. Afterwards, he studied the same material from Coxeter\u27s 1994 popular undergraduate textbook Projective Geometry. We report here some of his experiences and impressions contextualizing them along the way