rl was
younger than me we were in the same class. Such a bright, clever
fellow he was! Always through with his lessons before any of the rest
of us, he was, and always at the top of the class. And the stories he
could tell, lad! Never did I hear such stories. In the playground
before school opened we used to get around him and make him tell
stories till our hair stood on end."

"And was his temper cheerful and good--was he well liked?" asked the
Young Comrade.

"Liked? He was the favorite of the whole school, teachers and all, my
boy. Never was he bad tempered or mean. Nobody ever knew Karl to do a
bad thing. But he was full of mischief and good-hearted fun. He loved
to play tricks upon other boys, and sometimes upon the teachers, too.

"He could write the funniest verses about people you ever heard in
your life, and sometimes all the boys and girls in the school would be
shouting his rhymes as they went through the streets. If another boy
did anything to him, Karl would write some verses that made the fellow
look like a fool, and we would all recite them just to see the poor
fellow get mad. Such fun we had then. But, I tell you, we were awfully
afraid of Karl's pin-pricking verses!

"Once, I remember well, we had a bad-tempered old teacher. He was a
crabbed old fellow, and all the boys got to hate him. Always using the
rod, he was. Karl said to me one day as we were going home from
school: 'The crooked old sinner! I'll make him wince with some verses
before long, Hans,' and then we both laughed till we were sore."

"And did he write the verses?" asked the Young Comrade.

"Write them? I should say he did! You didn't know Karl, or you would
never ask such a question as that. Next morning, when we got in
school, Karl handed around a few copies of his poem about old Herr von
Holst, and pretty soon we were all tittering. The whole room was in a
commotion.

"Of course, the teacher soon found out what was wrong and Karl was
called outside and asked to explain about them. 'I'm a poet, Herr
teacher,' he said, 'and have a poet's license. You must not ask a poet
to explain.' Of course, we all laughed at that, and the poor Herr von
Holst was like a great mad bull."

"And was he disciplined?"

"To be sure he was! His father was very angry, too. But what did we
care about that? We sang the verses on the streets, and wrote them on
the walls or anywhere else that we could. We made it so hot for the
poor teacher that he had