write and, as he grew up in a multicultural environment, he knew several languages. From childhood, he could speak Ukrainian and Yiddish and understood German. On 6 December 1875, his father died and the family moved to Stanisławów. To improve their financial situation, his mother leased flats to secondary school students. Two years later, he entered secondary school. During this time he earned money by giving his colleagues private lessons. At that time, he was under the strong influence of his older brother, Feliks, who taught him how to be a good Polish patriot. Together they performed minor subversive actions. Feliks wrote an anniversary poem in honour of Maurycy Gosławski, a poet who fought in the November Uprising. Ignacy made copies of the poem and scattered them around the poet's grave. The Austrian police started an investigation and Feliks was arrested, while Ignacy was released pending trial. However, they were both acquitted. Feliks still did not abandon his subversive activity. He created a conspiratorial group that drew Polish and Ukrainian teenagers from the Stanisławów area. Ignacy contributed to the group by establishing its rules. In 1882 Ignacy Daszyński gave a patriotic speech to students during the long school break. This brought his expulsion from the school and an end to his family's easy life in Stanisławów. Their financial situation collapsed, and they had to move to Lwów. Feliks began studying chemistry at the Lwów Polytechnic. Soon Ignacy and his mother had to move again. They went to Drohobycz, where he began his first job, as a lawyer's secretary (no school was willing to enroll him). During this time he came into contact with the working class for the first time. Soon he started to write for the leftist biweekly Gazeta Naddniestrzańska (Dniester Gazette), in which he wrote about the hard conditions of workers employed by the petroleum industry in Stanisławów and Drohobycz. In September 1884, when his mother moved to Przemyśl, Ignacy was left alone in Lwów. Again he was refused enrollment at school, and so studied at home. Politics and diplomacy At that time, Daszyński's socialist political views were already taking shape. In 1886, he became a tutor to some friends of his parents. On 8 April 1888, he was allowed to pass the Matura (school leavers' examinations) without attending the classes. He received his diploma on 22 September 1888 and went on to study philosophy at the Jagiellonian