Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1909 — Chopin and the Children. [ARTICLE]

Chopin and the Children.

A chronicler of the life of Chopin, the great pianist, tells the following anecdote: On one occasion the pupils in his father’s school, freed temporarily from the ’•estraint of the elder Chopin, arranged to have some fun with their tutor. When the commotion was at its height Chopin entered and set himself to quell it. He told the boys that if they would remain quiet he would play for them. He darkened the room and started , his improvisation, telling the skylarkers a romantic story of a band of robbers who approached a hoijse, mounted by ladders to the windows, but were frightened away by a noise within. They fled into a dark wood, where they fell asleep under a starry sky. Chopin by this time was playing more and more softly, as if seeking to lull the robbers in tiie wood and incidentally the children in the schoolroom to rest. When he had satisfied himself that his hearers had actually fallen asleep, Chopin crept from the room abd brought his parents to look at them. He turned up the lights, and the boys slept on until he reseated himself at the piano and struck a thrilling chord, at which they all awakened with a start.