Prouty
CHARLES AZRO, American economist. Born in 1853 at Newport, Vt., he graduated from Dartwas admitted to the bar in 1882. From mouth College in the class of '75, and 1888 to 1896 he held the position of reporter of the Vermont Supreme Court. President McKinley in 1897 appointed him a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission and in a few years was a recognized master of the growing problem of transportation. In 1912 he PROVENCAL PROVERB served as chairman of the Commission. to a variety of cases it can never be- Prouty is the author of two works on come a proverb. Every Oriental collececonomics, "Transportation-Everyday tion abounds in proverbs like "The ant Ethics" (1910), and "The Trust Problem" (1911).
PROVENÇAL, a romance dialect that sprang up in France on the decline of literary Latin. Originally Provençal and Northern French came from the same stock, but by the 12th century they differed almost as widely as French and Italian. Owing to its rhyming facilities it was essentially the language of the troubadours and extended over the area from the Alps to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean to the Loire, as well as in parts of Spain and Switzerland.
The first historic Provençal author was Guillem IX., Count of Poitiers, who lived toward the end of the 11th century.
The following 150 years was the most brilliant period of the troubadours, and marked the highest development of Provençal. With the 13th century the real literary Provençal disappeared, but in the 19th it was again revived by such poets as Jacques, Jasmin, Romanille, Mistral, and Aubanel, who started a movement for the preservation of Provençal languages and customs. See TROUBA- DOUR