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Carl experienced the uncertain dreads of a dwarf futilely attempting to squirm from a ring of perspiring golden giants known to the world, and not even sure of whether he ought to escape, but knowing only that a vicious and unformed ache within him found little taste for the flat-footed routines of clerk or salesman. Upon another planet this initial writhing is doubtless offered the consolation of better compromises, but the treadmill uproars of this earth merely increased Carl’s feelings of shrinking anger.

“Oh, well, I’ll work in a store or sell something, and make money. Life won’t let you do anything else,” he said to himself. “But inside of me, m-m, there I’ll do as I please. I’ll make a country where poets and other begging men live in little huts on the obscure hills and rear their families of thoughts and emotions, with a haughty peacefulness.”

He shunned the people around him as much as possible, studying his lessons in a precisely weary manner and squatting on the grass of a public park near his home where he wrote his dimly placid lyrics to the sun and moon. He had no companions at school, for the children around him were quick to jibe at any remark of his that contained a searching wraith of thought, and he did not join in the school’s minor activities because of his angry pride at the giggling accusations of queerness which he received from the other boys and girls. They regarded him for moments as an enticing target, reviling his exact grammar and mild manners, but for the most part they paid little heed to this grotesque atom lost in the swirl of their games and plans. In a smaller school the strident inquisitiveness of average children thrown upon each other might have overwhelmed him, but in the immense city high-school he managed effortlessly to isolate himself, and the children, once having dubbed him poet-laureate—sarcastically mimicking the phraseology of their elders—proceeded to forget about him.