and indulged to the utmost his fondness for caricaturing by
pictorial and personal imitations. In the course of a lecture the
worthy rector of the Lyceum discovered the scapegrace making free
with the face and figure of no less a person than his own
rectorial self. Nevertheless the irreverent pupil got off easily,
for the master, with as much magnanimity as wisdom, abstained
from punishing the culprit, and, in a subscript which he added to
the caricature, even praised the execution of it. A German
Protestant pastor at Warsaw, who made always sad havoc of the
Polish language, in which he had every Sunday to preach one of
his sermons, was the prototype of one of the imitations with
which Frederick frequently amused his friends. Our hero's talent
for changing the expression of his face, of which George Sand,
Liszt, Balzac, Hiller, Moscheles, and other personal
acquaintances, speak with admiration, seems already at this time
to have been extraordinary. Of the theatricals which the young
folks were wont to get up at the paternal house, especially on
the name-days of their parents and friends, Frederick was the
soul and mainstay. With a good delivery he combined a presence of
mind that enabled him to be always ready with an improvisation
when another player forgot his part. A clever Polish actor,
Albert Piasecki, who was stage-manager on these occasions, gave
it as his opinion that the lad was born to be a great actor. In
after years two distinguished members of the profession in
France, M. Bocage and Mdme. Dorval, expressed similar opinions.
For their father's name-day in 1824, Frederick and his sister
Emilia wrote conjointly a one-act comedy in verse, entitled THE
MISTAKE; OR, THE PRETENDED ROGUE, which was acted by a juvenile
company. According to Karasowski, the play showed that the
authors had a not inconsiderable command of language, but in