All day long he
was pulling faces. As an artist will sketch everything he comes across,
so Mike would endeavour to imitate any characteristic expression or
attitude, animate or inanimate, in the world around him. Dogs, little
boys, and grotesque old men were his special delight, and of all his
elders he had, it goes without saying, a private gallery of irreverently
faithful portraits.
In addition to his plastic face, Nature had given him a larynx which was
capable of imitating every human and inhuman sound. To squeak like a
pig, bark like a dog, low like a cow, and crow like a cock, were the
veriest juvenilia of his attainments; and he could imitate the buzzing
of a fly so cunningly that flies themselves have often been deceived. It
was this delight in imitation for its own sake, and not so much that he
had been caught by the usual allurements of the theatre, that he looked
upon the career of an actor as his natural and ultimate calling. It was
already privately whispered in the little circle that Mike would some
day go on the stage. But don't tell that as yet to old Mr.
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