The Ambassadors by Henry James
page 76 of 598 (12%)
page 76 of 598 (12%)
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"Yes--a workshop; a great production, a great industry. The
concern's a manufacture--and a manufacture that, if it's only properly looked after, may well be on the way to become a monopoly. It's a little thing they make--make better, it appears, than other people can, or than other people, at any rate, do. Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at least in that particular line," Strether explained, "put them on it with great effect, and gave the place altogether, in his time, an immense lift." "It's a place in itself?" "Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony. But above all it's a thing. The article produced." "And what IS the article produced?" Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. "I'll tell you next time." But when the next time came he only said he'd tell her later on--after they should have left the theatre; for she had immediately reverted to their topic, and even for himself the picture of the stage was now overlaid with another image. His postponements, however, made her wonder--wonder if the article referred to were anything bad. And she explained that she meant improper or ridiculous or wrong. But Strether, so far as that went, could satisfy her. "Unmentionable? Oh no, we constantly talk of it; we are quite familiar and brazen about it. Only, as a small, trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use, it's just wanting in-what shall I say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to distinction. Right here therefore, with everything |
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