It was during these three years of his Cambridge life that I
became acquainted with his work. He had already printed a
tale--"The Story of a Year"--in the "Atlantic Monthly," when I
was asked to be Mr. Fields's assistant in the management, and it
was my fortune to read Mr. James's second contribution in
manuscript. "Would you take it?" asked my chief. "Yes, and all
the stories you can get from the writer." One is much securer of
one's judgment at twenty-nine than, say, at forty-five; but if
this was a mistake of mine I am not yet old enough to regret it.
The story was called "Poor Richard," and it dealt with the
conscience of a man very much in love with a woman who loved his
rival. He told this rival a lie, which sent him away to his
death on the field,--in that day nearly every fictitious
personage had something to do with the war,--but Poor Richard's
lie did not win him his love. It still seems to me that the
situation was strongly and finely felt. One's pity went, as it
should, with the liar; but the whole story had a pathos which
lingers in my mind equally with a sense of the new literary
qualities which gave me such delight in it. I admired, as we
must in all that Mr. James has written, the finished workmanship
in which there is no loss of vigor; the luminous and uncommon use
of words, the originality of phrase, the whole clear and
beautiful style, which I confess I weakly liked the better for
the occasional gallicisms remaining from an inveterate habit of
French. Those who know the writings of Mr. Henry James will
recognize the inherited felicity of diction which is so striking
in the writings of Mr. Henry James, Jr. The son's diction is not
so racy as the father's; it lacks its daring, but it is as
fortunate and graphic; and I cannot give it greater praise than