Un het he mâl Langewil
Schleit he Rötten d’ôt mil’n Bil.
Kaiser Kläs.
Klaus (Doctor), hero and title of a comedy by Herr Adolph l’Arronge (1878). Dr. Klaus is a gruff, but noble-minded and kind-hearted man, whose niece (a rich jeweller’s daughter) has married a poor nobleman of such extravagant notions that the wife’s property is soon dissipated; the young spendthrift is reformed. The doctor has a coachman, who invades his master’s province, and undertakes to cure a sick peasant.
Klaus (Peter), the prototype of Rip van Winkle. Klaus [Klows] is a goatherd of Sittendorf, who was one day accosted by a young man, who beckoned him to follow. Peter obeyed, and was led into a deep dell, where he found twelve knights playing skittles, no one of whom uttered a word. Gazing around, he noticed a can of wine, and, drinking some of its contents, was overpowered with sleep. When he awoke, he was amazed at the height of the grass, and when he entered the village everything seemed strange to him. One or two companions encountered him, but those whom he knew as boys were grown middle-aged men, and those whom he knew as middle-aged were gray-beards. After much perplexity he discovered he had been asleep for twenty years (See Sleepers).
Your Epimenidês, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since named “Rip van Winkle.”—T Carlyle.
Kleiner (General), governor of Prague, brave as a lion, but tender-hearted as a girl. It was Kleiner who rescued the infant daughter of Mahldenau at the siege of Magdeburg. A soldier seized the infant’s nurse, but Kleiner smote him down, saved the child, and brought it up as his own daughter. Mahldenau being imprisoned in Prague as a spy, Meeta, his daughter, came to Prague to beg for his pardon, and it then came to light that the governor’s adopted daughter was Meeta’s sister.—S. Knowles, The Maid of Mariendorpt (1838).
Knag (Miss), forewoman of Mde. Mantalini, milliner, near Cavendish Square, London. After doting on Kate Nickleby for three whole days, this spiteful creature makes up her mind to hate her for ever.—C. Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, xviii. (1838).
Knickerbocker (Diedrich), nom de plume of Washington Irving, in his History of New York (1809).
Knight of Arts and Industry, the hero of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence (canto ii. 7-13, 1748).