pleasant kind of clever naivete which is truly his
own. We see him musing among the firs and the pine-trees of his native
Provence, or riding on the top of the diligence under the scorching sun
and listening, in a Sterne-like fashion, to the conversation which took
place between the facetious baker and the unhappy knife-grinder, or
chatting familiarly with Frederic Mistral, who takes him into the
confidence of his poetical dreams. Then, again, we see him sitting down
at the table of an Algerian sheik; or wandering on the gloomy rocks
where the Semillante was lost, and trying to revive the awful tragedy of
her last minutes; or shut up in a solitary light-house with the keepers
for weeks and weeks together, content with the society and with the fare
of those poor, rough, uncultivated men, cut off from the whole world,
alone with the stormy winds and his stormy thoughts. Wherever his morbid
restlessness takes him, whatever part he chooses to assume, whether he
wants to move us to laughter or to tears, we can but follow him
fascinated and spell-bound, and in harmony with his moods. Daudet when
he wrote those letters was already a perfect master of all the resources
of the language. What he had seen or felt, he could make us see and
feel. He could make old words new with the freshness, ardor, and
sincerity of the personal impressions which he was pouring into them
unceasingly.

The 'Letters from My Mill' had been scattered here and there through
different newspapers, and at different times. They were reprinted in the
form of a book in 1868. The year before he had given to the public 'Le
Petit Chose' (A Little Chap), which is better known, I believe, to the
English-speaking races under the rather misleading title of 'My Brother
Jack.' 'Le Petit Chose' was a commercial success, but it is doubtful
whether it will rank as high among Daudet's productions as the 'Lettres
de Mon Moulin.' He began to compose it in February 1866, during one of
those misanthropic fits to which he was subject at periodical intervals,
and which either paralyzed altogether, or quickened into fever, his
creative faculties. He finished the work two years later in a very
different mood, immediately after his marriage. As might have been
expected, the two parts are very dissimilar, and it must be confessed
greatly unequal. 'Le Petit Chose' has reminded more than one reader of
'David Copperfield'; and it cannot be denied that the two works bear
some resembla