lication of ours. The drawings in
no way foreshadowed Gabriel's later manner; they were just what an
imaginative young fellow of seventeen or eighteen would draw, but I feel
sure there were no beautiful peculiarities or other poetical deviations
from the natural in this his early work. I often wonder where the
"Weekly Critic" is in hiding. If this should meet the eye of anybody who
knows, I trust he will come forward and receive my blessing in exchange
for the drawings which we will give to an expectant world.

When I was about twelve I made my first appearance on the stage under
peculiar circumstances. My father had announced a concert in Baden,
where we were spending the summer, he the centre of a musical circle, I
a schoolboy enjoying my holidays, and specially devoted to the climbing
of trees and the picking of blackberries. The impresario of the Court
Theatre in Carlsruhe (he seemed to me a sort of Grand Mogul) had
graciously permitted the stars of his Opera to sing at that concert of
my father's. At the eleventh hour, however, there was a hitch, and the
stars were needed to shine on their own Grand-Ducal boards. In the hope
that matters might yet be settled in his favour, my father sent me to
him with urgent messages. On my arrival I made straight for the theatre,
and entering by an unguarded back door, I soon found myself in a maze of
dark passages. The sounds of music guided me to the stage, where a
rehearsal of the "Vier Haymons-Kinder" was going on, and from the wings
I found my way into a rustic arbour destined for the trysting-place of
the lovers in the particular scene which was being rehearsed; there I
was biding my time when I was discovered by the lady who had come to
meet the tenor. The performance was abruptly stopped; the lady was no
other than the great prima donna and our old friend Madame Haizinger.
Rushing at me with a cry of dramatic exultation, she seized me and
carried me triumphantly on to the middle of the stage. "Here," she
cried, holding me up to the assembled company, my arms and legs
dangling in mid-air--"here, ladies and gentlemen, you see Felix, the son
of my old friend Moscheles." The Grand Mogul sat at a table covered with
papers to my left, and happily looked upon the interruption and the
rapturous outburst as nothing uncommon. As soon as I was replaced on my
feet, I delivered my messages, but my influence as a diplomatic agent
was not proof against untoward circumstances, and I faile