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 and Andersen went with him. He was pleased and excited at the change; the beautiful country round Elsinore filled him with joy; but, alas! he got on still less well with his master, who treated him, Andersen says, as a perfectly stupid, brutish boy. At that period it was considered the right thing for schoolmasters, and even parents, never to praise a child or encourage him for fear of spoiling him. Yet all the time this master was scolding and laughing at Hans, he was writing to the boy's friends, praising his nature, his warm heart and imagination, and his diligence in work. He recommended him as worthy of any support in the way of money or education that might be given him. One day Andersen brought his master a poem he had written, and the man scoffed and said it was mere idle trash, and only fit for the rubbish-heap. This quite finished Hans; he was found by another master in deep distress. The same master told Andersen's friends of the boy's unhappiness and advised his removal. He was taken away. So ended what Andersen describes as the "darkest and bitterest period of my life." He had been at school a little more than three years.

Andersen now became a student at Copenhagen. He worked hard and conscientiously, but was always stupid at examinations, and at Latin and Greek. In his spare time he wrote poems, plays, and sketches, and published his first considerable book called "A Journey on Foot from Holmen's Canal to the East