The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-01-03
THE AMBASSADORS


 To read James with enjoyment and ap preciation Is to go a step further-tht homely old phrase fits the case entirely To 20 a step further in discrimination in divination. in observation, in inspira' tion, in-everything.
 Who but James could hold the intense interest of the reader with statements of facts like these, her gloves were won derfully fresh, she wore red velvet hood about her throat, her veil was thick. CT than usual. Yet under his pen these simple things seem to take even a psy- chological value.
 There is just enough. if one can only take time to unwind it, from the deli cate embroidery of delft and exquisite phrases. Phrases so delightfully."- put that the reader forgets the story and cares nothing for the people in it at times, as one forgets to follow the text of some an cient time down whose illuminated mar. gins the eye has fallen to follow the del. icate clear traceries of gold, blue, purple and scarlet.
 In his own words: "All sorts of pleas ant small things-flowered in the air oi the occasion"
 MT. Lewis Lambert Streter, with the name out of a novel, the imagination o1 a romancer, the stoveling of circum' stances, the perfection of failure, Is al ways in evidence; a hero without ca reer; a lover without a love affair Qoi it takes two to make up that, and Streth' CT is always withdrawn when the "other' is on hand. an artist without master piece. That is Strether. And Strethei knows it: I'm true, but I'm incredible I'm fantastic and ridiculous; I don't ex plain myself even to myself"
 He knows he is always missing things through-general genuis for missing them" There 1t is. The whole story ol Strether is in the incidept of the little French landscape. the little Lambine "the picture he would have bought bu which he quite absurdly never forgot. When he gets one of his rare holidays in his life work of attending at other peoples romances and affairs, he goe' for day into rural France, in search O. the little Lambinet in real. He has hard ly to go an hours run from Paris to fint it, all that the oblong gold frame held "the poplars, and willows, the reeds ant river, the sky silver and turquoise ant varnish; the village on the left wa! white and the church on the right wa: gray it was all there in short" and i; 1t not always just so there in France One wonders, in passing, if the artist; themselves ever go more than an houl
  all.
 He had his little Lambinet, in real fol one whole day, the oval frame accommo datingly enlarging to admit what migh have been the originals of a series O Lambinets, he had his little sensation o passing in the body, alone, through vivid little Monpassant story, but he los well, a geed deal of his ideal fanc! about real people.
 He was always the loser, poor Lamber Strether.
 But this was nothing new to him, h' had confessed to Little Bilham, in tha soft and stately garden in St. Gerhafn that: "There were something's that ha' to come in time if they were to come a all" Those things. just the most desir able, always came too late to .Strether.
 1t became indeed to him to be his onl! logic, his line of life, to miss everything to stave off impressions, to even le Miss Gostrey go with the simple com plexity: That, you sec is my only logic Not, out of the whole affair, to have go anything for myself"
 But, with your wonderful impressions you'll have got q great deal.''
 "A great deal. But nothing like you It's you who would make me wrong.
 Honest and fine. she couldn't pretend she didn't see it..
 So that is life as James sees it. a many of us feel it, all the best thing come too late-often too late even to b asked in. The effect of Paris on varie' types of Americans is divertingly shown
 It had a binding effect on Strether making him see linen as trees walking, but his blindness was brought on nor probably by his belief-in all that wa told him. It gave Miss Barrace wa, of finding everything and everybod, wonderful It made Maria Gostrey with her treasures gathered in perfec apartments brown as a pirates cave, ii the midst of her horde of friends, as alon as one of Maupassant's souls.
 It caused Waymarah, American enougl to fit himself into any large type tha moves under Old Glory, bethipk himsel to don in summer (the summer of Pari halved with fine dust, and rich wit nowers), the attire of an ante-bellun large planter. X Melrose, Mass, lawyer il Southern planter gear! But in Paris if one feels American at all, one feel American enough for anything; To fit an type from the East, or the West, or tn North, or the South.
 It changed Chad from a rich nobod to a charming cosmopolitan. but lief him American enough to utter splendi panegyric on the art of advertising!
 with the right man to work it c'es sun monde
 It showed up. that Paris, Mrs. New some, the splendid moral swell" thougl absent in a cleaner. more austere ligh than America had been able to shoJ her.
 It brought Mamie, the typical America bride at her bridal reception, the groome man that America had never furnished but Paris had the groom-all prepared and American at that. Gracious Paris.
 1t converted Leittle Bilham: But con