there he renewed his love of reading. The
solitariness of his life did him good, by throwing his mind in upon
himself, and showing the mental stuff of which he was made. All the
greatest and weightiest things have been done in solitude.

The first books he read were for the most part borrowed. Customers
who came to the shop to be shaved or have their hair dressed, took an
interest in the conversation of the bright, cheerful, dark-eyed lad, and
some of them lent him books to read. What joy possessed him when he took
refuge in his garret with a new book! Opening the book was like
opening the door of a new world. What enchantment! What mystery! What a
wonderful universe about us!

In reading a new book Jasmin forgot his impoverished boyhood, his
grandfather Boe and his death in the hospital, his expulsion from the
Seminary, and his mother's sale of her wedding-ring to buy bread for
her children. He had now left the past behind, and a new world lay
entrancingly before him. He read, and thought, and dreamed, until far on
in the morning.

The first books he read were of comparatively little importance, though
they furnished an opening into literature. 'The Children's Magazine'{1}
held him in raptures for a time. Some of his friendly customers lent him
the 'Fables of Florian,' and afterwards Florian's pastoral romance of
'Estelle'--perhaps his best work. The singer of the Gardon entirely
bewitched Jasmin. 'Estelle' allured him into the rosy-fingered regions
of bliss and happiness. Then Jasmin himself began to rhyme. Florian's
works encouraged him to write his first verses in the harmonious Gascon
patois, to which he afterwards gave such wonderful brilliancy.

In his after life Jasmin was often asked how and when he first began to
feel himself a poet. Some think that the poetical gift begins at some
fixed hour, just as one becomes a barrister, a doctor, or a professor.
But Jasmin could not give an answer.

"I have often searched into my past life," he said, "but I have never
yet found the day when I began my career of rhyming."{2}

There are certain gifts which men can never acquire by will and work, if
God has not put the seed of them into their souls at birth; and poetry
is one of those gifts.

When such a seed has been planted, its divine origin is shown by
its power of growth and expansion; and in a noble soul, apparently
insurmountable difficulties and obstacles cannot arrest its development.
The life and career o