hing that the press may suggest that it ought to hear about;
so that nothing may be said ever to happen anywhere that it doesn't
count on having reported to it, hot and hot, as the phrase is, several
times a day. We were the first American ambulance corps in the field,
and we have a record of more than four months' continuous service with
one of the French armies, but the rigor of the objection to our taking
the world into our intimate confidence is not only shown by our still
unbroken inability to report in lively installments, but receives also a
sidelight from the fact that numerous like private corps maintained by
donations on this side of the sea are working at the front without the
least commemoration of their deeds--that is, without a word of
journalistic notice.

"I hope that by the time these possibly too futile remarks of mine come
to such light as may await them Mr. Norton's report of our general case
may have been published, and nothing would give the committee greater
pleasure than that some such controlled statement on our behalf, best
proceeding from the scene of action itself, should occasionally appear.
The ideal would, of course, be that exactly the right man, at exactly
the right moment, should report exactly the right facts, in exactly the
right manner, and when that happy consummation becomes possible we shall
doubtless revel in funds."

Mr. James had expressed himself with such deliberation and hesitation
that I was reminded of what I had heard of all the verbal alterations
made by him in novels and tales long since published; to the point, we
are perhaps incorrectly told of replacing a "she answered" by a "she
indefinitely responded."

I should, indeed, mention that on my venturing to put to Mr. James a
question or two about his theory of such changes he replied that no
theory could be stated, at any rate in the off-hand manner that I seemed
to invite, without childish injustice to the various considerations by
which a writer is moved. These determinant reasons differ with the
context and the relations of parts to parts and to the total sense in a
way of which no a priori account can be given.

"I dare say I strike you," he went on, "as rather bewilderedly weighing
my words; but I may perhaps explain my so doing very much as I the other
day heard a more interesting fact explained. A distinguished English
naval expert happened to say to me that the comparative non-production
of airships in this