Japanese habit of expressing myself with excessive politeness
Contemptuous pity, both for my suspicions and the cause of them

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Ah! the natural perversity of inanimate things
Contemptuous pity, both for my suspicions and the cause of them
Dull hours spent in idle and diffuse conversation
Efforts to arrange matters we succeed often only in disarranging
Found nothing that answered to my indefinable expectations
Habit turns into a makeshift of attachment
I know not what lost home that I have failed to find
Irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan
Japanese habit of expressing myself with excessive politeness
Ordinary, trivial, every-day objects
Prayers swallowed like pills by invalids at a distance
Seeking for a change which can no longer be found
Trees, dwarfed by a Japanese process
When the inattentive spirits are not listening
Which I should find amusing in any one else,—­any one I loved

AN “ATTIC” PHILOSOPHER

(Un Philosophe sous les Toits)

By Emile Souvestre

With a Preface by Joseph Bertrand, of the French Academy

EMILE SOUVESTRE

No one succeeds in obtaining a prominent place in literature, or in surrounding himself with a faithful and steady circle of admirers drawn from the fickle masses of the public, unless he possesses originality, constant variety, and a distinct personality.  It is quite possible to gain for a moment a few readers by imitating some original feature in another; but these soon vanish and the writer remains alone and forgotten.  Others, again, without belonging to any distinct group of authors, having found their standard in themselves, moralists and educators at the same time, have obtained undying recognition.

Of the latter class, though little known outside of France, is Emile Souvestre, who was born in Morlaix, April 15, 1806, and died at Paris July 5, 1854.  He was the son of a civil engineer, was educated at the college of Pontivy, and intended to follow his father’s career by entering the Polytechnic School.  His father, however, died in 1823, and Souvestre matriculated as a law-student at Rennes.  But the young student soon devoted himself entirely to literature.  His first essay, a tragedy, ‘Le Siege de Missolonghi’ (1828), was a pronounced failure.  Disheartened and disgusted he left Paris and established himself first as a lawyer in Morlaix.  Then he became proprietor of a newspaper, and was afterward appointed a professor in Brest and in Mulhouse.  In 1836 he contributed to the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’ some sketches of life in Brittany, which obtained a brilliant success.  Souvestre was soon made editor of La Revue de Paris, and in consequence early found a publisher for his first novel, ‘L’Echelle de Femmes’, which, as was the case with his second work, Riche et Pauvre’, met with a very favorable reception.  His reputation was now made, and between this period and his death he gave to France about sixty volumes—­tales, novels, essays, history, and drama.