The well-educated but by no means wealthy middle class supplied the school with its best material.
The evolution of the human soul is a strange thing.

The period during which, in my overflowing mirth, I played all sorts of wild pranks, and at school worked earnestly for one teacher only, often found me toiling late at night for hours with burning head over a profound creation--I called it The Poem of the World--in which I tried to represent the origin of cosmic and human life.
Many other verses, from a sonnet to the beautiful ears of a pretty cousin to the commencement of the tragedy of Panthea and Abradatus, were written at that time; but I owe The Poem of the World special gratitude, for it kept me from many a folly, and often held me for weeks at my desk during the evening hours which many of my comrades spent in the tavern.
Besides, it attracted the new head-master's attention to my poetical tastes, for a number of verses had been left by mistake in an exercise-book.

He read them, and asked to see the rest.

But I could not fulfil the wish, for they contained many things which could not fail to offend him; so I gave him only a few of the tamest passages, and can still see him smile in his peculiar way as he read them in my presence.
He said something about "decided talent," and when preparations for the celebration of the birthday of King Frederick William IV were made he gave me the task of composing an original poem.

I gladly accepted it.
Writing was a great pleasure, and though my productions at school were far too irregular for me to call them good, I was certainly the best declaimer.
THE NEW HEAD OF THE SCHOOL.
Before passing on to other subjects, I must devote a few words to the remodelling of the school and its new head.
At the end of my first term in the first class we learned that we were to have a new teacher, and one who would rule with a rod of iron.
Terrible stories of his Draconian severity were in circulation, and his first address gave us reason to fear the worst, for the tall man of forty in the professor's chair was very imposing in his appearance.
His smoothly shaven upper lip and brown whiskers, his erect bearing and energetic manner, reminded one of an English parliamentary leader, but his words sounded almost menacing.