ocial habitudes the peculiar poetry which suits
with hardship. It was not for him to sing of summer and nectarines,
nor to honestly appreciate or kindly judge those who did so; but
he sang of winter, of crab-apples, of cranberries, of reptiles, of
field-mice, with just the right accent and with a tingling vibration
of life in his chords. The Bernard Palissy of literature, he modeled
his frogs and water-snakes so true that they seemed better than birds
of paradise.

Babolain. From the French of Gustave Droz. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

This is a tragical little romance which draws the reader along with
it by every line in every page, yet its power is derived from the
resources of caricature: it is rather the hollow side of a comic mask
than a true expression of pathos. Scientific and stupid, Professor
Babolain enters the world of Paris armed with his innocence, his
uncle's legacy, his deep learning and his utter ignorance. A couple
of adventuresses, mother and daughter, swoop down upon him as a lawful
prey, and he is quickly a doting husband and a terrified son-in-law.
The sole redeeming trait about the younger woman, who is a beauty and
who paints, is that she never makes the least pretence of loving
him: in his first moments of adoration she mystifies him heartlessly,
crushing him with her wit and confounding him with her art:
"Difficult? oh no! In the first place, you need rabbits' hair: that
is indispensable. If you had no rabbits, or if you were in a country
where rabbits had no hair, painting could not be thought of." She
never melts, except when he presents her with a riviere of diamonds,
and, after finding a leisure moment to give birth to a little girl,
rushes off to Italy with Count Vaugirau, followed promptly by a
certain Timoleon. This Timoleon, who loves her unsuccessfully, is the
beneficiary of poor Babolain, borrowing his money at the same time
that he tries to borrow his wife, and returning with outrageous
reproaches to the hero impoverished and desolate. This precious friend
is a specimen of all the rest. The very daughter, sole consolation
of her parent's straitened existence, but ill fulfills the rapturous
anticipations of early fatherhood. He is at first her nurse and
teacher: "I saw the satin-like skin of her little neck, and behind her
ear, fresh and pink like the petal of a flower, the soft curls upon
the nape of her neck, half hair, half down, sucking in with their
greedy roots the sweet juices