The Story of My Life Author:Hans Christian Andersen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. WHEN, late in the evening, I arrived at the inn in Sla- gelse, I asked the hostess if there were anything remarkable in the city. " Yes," said... more » she, " a new English fire-engine and Pastor Basthohn's library," — and those probably were all the lions in the city. A few officers of the Lancers composed the fine- gentleman world. Everybody knew what was done in everybody's house, whether a scholar was elevated or degraded in his class, and the like. A private theatre, to which, at general rehearsal, the scholars of the grammar school and the maid-servants of the town had free entrance, furnished rich material for conversation. In my " Picture Book without Pictures," the fourth night, I have given a sketch of it I boarded with a respectable widow of the educated class, and had a little chamber looking out into the garden and field. My place in the school was in the lowest class, among little boys: I knew indeed nothing at all. I was actually like a wild bird which is confined in a cage ; I had the greatest desire to learn, but for the moment I floundered about, as if I had -been thrown into the sea; one wave followed another; grammar, geography, mathematics : I felt myself overpowered by them, and feared that I should never be able to acquire all these. The Rector, who took a peculiar delight in turning everything to ridicule, did not, of course, make an exception in my case. To me he stood there as a divinity ; I believed unconditionally every word which he spoke. One day, when I had replied incorrectly to his question, and he said that I was stupid, I mentioned it to Collin, and told him my anxiety, lest I did not deserve all that people had done for me ; but he consoled me. Occasionally, however, on some subjects of instruction, I began to receive a good cert...« less