I never spoke to her again about these things, but we were no longer the same playmates as before. I was the smallest in the school, and my teacher, Mr. Carsten, always took me by the hand while the other boys played, that I might not be run over; he loved me much, gave me cakes and flowers, and tapped me on the cheeks. One of the older boys did not know his lesson, and was punished by being placed, book in hand, upon the school-table, around which we were seated; but seeing me quite inconsolable at this punishment, he pardoned the culprit.
The poor old teacher became, later in life, telegraph-director at Thorseng, where he still lived until a few years since. It is said that the old man, when showing the visitors around, told them with a pleasant smile, "Well, well, you will perhaps not believe that such a poor old man as I was the first teacher of one of our most renowned poets!"
Sometimes, during the harvest, my mother went into the field to glean. I accompanied her, and we went, like Ruth in the Bible, to glean in the rich fields of Boaz. One day we went to a place the bailiff of which was well known for being a man of a rude and savage disposition. We saw him coming with a huge whip in his hand, and my mother and all the others ran away. I had wooden shoes on my bare feet, and in my haste I lost these, and then the thorns pricked me so that I could not run, and thus I was left behind and alone. The man came up and lifted his whip to strike me, when I looked him in the face and involuntarily exclaimed, "How dare you strike me, when God can see it?"
The strong, stern man looked at me, and at once became mild; he patted me on my cheeks, asked me my name, and gave me money.
When I brought this to my mother and showed it her, she said to the others, "He is a strange child, my Hans Christian; everybody is kind to him. This bad fellow even has given him money."
MADAME MICHELET,
FRENCH AUTHOR, WIFE OF THE WELL-KNOWN WRITER, MICHELET.