...ly, of course, on the “picture book” quality that contemporary English and American prose appears more and more destined, by the conditions of publica... ...or that thing. They were to remain at the most small pictures of our “set” stage with the actors left out; and what was above all interesting was that... ...They were to remain at the most small pictures of our “set” stage with the actors left out; and what was above all interesting was that they were first... ...scination tended all the while to rule the business—a fascination, at each stage of my journey, on the noted score of that so shifting and uneven char... ... to reach its maximum, no doubt, over many of the sorry businesses of “The American,” for instance, where, given the elements and the essence, the lon... ...tion of several shorter pieces. Inevitably, in such a case as that of “The American,” and scarce less indeed in those of “The Portrait of a Lady” and ... ... places. We’ve been like a Book I, Chapter 1 9 pair of pirates—positively stage pirates, the sort who wink at each other and say ‘Hathaway Hathaway!’... ... by an untoward stroke, a hapless half orphan, with the place of immediate male parent swept bare and open to the next nearest sympathy. They had no o...