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 and in spite of being very nearly starved he continued to write poems and plays. One play he sent to the Royal Theater without giving his name, and never doubted in his childish ignorance that it would be accepted. It was sent back to him with a curt note saying that the play showed such a lack of education that it was absurd. But the only effect this had on Andersen was to make him write another, and he sent that to the manager of the theater; but this time those who read it said it showed unmistakable signs of talent, and advised that Andersen's friends should ask the King to help with money to support and educate the boy. Frederick VI of Denmark was like the kind kings in Andersen's stories. He arranged at once that Hans should be sent to the Latin School at Slagelse for three years, to be properly educated and cared for. This was arranged and Hans went off to school, but his time there was not at all happy.

The adventurous, free life he led in Copenhagen, though he had been hungry and cold, had been much more to his liking. In the story of his life he writes about this period with the greatest bitterness. He had been so happy at the prospect of learning, and when he got to school, he felt like a wild bird shut up in a cage. "I behaved," he said, "like one who is thrown into the water without being able to swim. It was a matter of life and death to me to make progress, but there came one billow after another—one called Mathematics, another called Grammar, another