 |
| The Escape Artist (1982) |
"You're the first man about whom I've ever found myself saying, 'Oh, if I were he--!' It's singular, but so it is. I've known many men who, besides any factitious advantages that I may possess, had money and brains into the bargain, yet they've never disturbed my inward peace. You've got something it worries me to have missed. It's not money, it's not even brains--though evidently yours have been excellent for your purpose. It's not your superfluous stature, though I should have rather liked to be a couple inches taller. It's a sort of air you have of being imperturbably, being irremovably and indestructibly (that's the thing!) at home in the world. ... My place in life had been made for me and it seemed easy to occupy. But you who, as I understand it, have made your own place, you who, as you told us the other day, have made and sold articles of vulgar household use--you strike me, in a fashion of your own, as a man who stands about at his ease and looks straight over ever so many high walls. I seem to see you move everywhere like a big stockholder on his favorite railroad...."
Henry James, The American
"He performed the movement frequent with him and which was always a symbol of his taking mental possession of a scene -- he extended his long legs."