In whatever company you find
yourself in England, you may
always be sure that some one
present is "staying," and you
come in due time to feel the
abysses within the word.
The large windows of the drawing room
I speak of looked away over the river
to the blurred and blotted hills,
where the rain was drizzling and drift-
ing. It was very quiet, as I say; there
was an air of large leisure .. [They]
talked about "town": that is what peop-
le talk about in the country. If I were
disposed I might represent them as talk-
ing with positive pathos of yearning.
We had a beautiful solstice day
in our Piedmont: breezy, warm, and
balmy as a resilient loft of pillow
to deliver us to Fall. In our count-
ry modesty, we can't tell you any-
thing you don't already know. We re-
ly on visits to constitute a world.
It is a treasure, our language gives
us, to resort to an ear so fluent in
our yearnings, it can build for them
a manor where they huddle, atavist-
ically. What else is a yearning, but
a delectation of unfulfillment?
Something more, I love to believe,
something I respect James for not
allowing to be easy, but showing.
Henry James
English Hours
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