Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/21

 it, and ridiculed him as the “play-writer.” This wounded him so deeply, that he passed one whole night weeping, and was only pacified, or rather, silenced, by his mother threatening to give him a good beating for his folly. Spite, however, of his ill success, he wrote again and again, studying, among other devices, German and French words, to give dignity to his dialogue. Again the whole town read his productions, and the boys shouted after him as he went, “Look! look: there goes the play-writer.”

One day he took to his schoolmaster, as a birthday present, a garland, with which he had twisted up a little poem. The schoolmaster was angry with him; he saw nothing but folly and false quantities in the verses, and thus the poor lad had nothing but trouble and tears.

The worldly affairs of the mother grew worse and worse, and as boys of his age earned money in a manufactory near, it was resolved that there also Hans Christian should be sent. His old grandmother took him to the manufactory, and shed bitter tears because the lot of the boy was so early toil