A Bundle of Letters / Henry James

CHAPTER I

FROM MISS MIRANDA MOPE, IN PARIS, TO MRS. ABRAHAM C. MOPE, AT BANGOR,

MAINE.

September 5th, 1879.

My dear mother--I have kept you posted as far as Tuesday week last, and,

although my letter will not have reached you yet, I will begin another

before my news accumulates too much. I am glad you show my letters round

in the family, for I like them all to know what I am doing, and I can't

write to every one, though I try to answer all reasonable expectations.

But there are a great many unreasonable ones, as I suppose you know--not

yours, dear mother, for I am bound to say that you never required of me

more than was natural. You see you are reaping your reward: I write to

you before I write to any one else.

The Author of Beltraffio / Henry James

CHAPTER I

Much as I wished to see him I had kept my letter of introduction

three weeks in my pocket-book. I was nervous and timid about

meeting him--conscious of youth and ignorance, convinced that he was

tormented by strangers, and especially by my country-people, and not

exempt from the suspicion that he had the irritability as well as the

dignity of genius. Moreover, the pleasure, if it should occur--for

I could scarcely believe it was near at hand--would be so great that

I wished to think of it in advance, to feel it there against my

breast, not to mix it with satisfactions more superficial and usual.

In the little game of new sensations that I was playing with my

ingenuous mind I wished to keep my visit to the author of

"Beltraffio" as a trump-card. It was three years after the

publication of that fascinating work, which I had read over five

times and which now, with my riper judgement, I admire on the whole

as much as ever.

Daisy Miller / Henry James

Part I

At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels, for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake--a lake that it behooves every tourist to visit. The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of establishments of this order, of every category, from the "grand hotel" of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the little Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteristics of an American watering place. There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting hither and thither of "stylish" young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces, a rattle of dance music in the morning hours, a sound of high-pitched voices at all times.