country indicated, in addition to other causes, a
possible limitation of the British genius in that direction, and then on
my asking him why that class of craft shouldn't be within the compass of
the greatest makers of sea-ships, replied, after brief reflection:
'Because the airship is essentially a bad ship, and we English can't
make a bad ship well enough.' Can you pardon," Mr. James asked, "my
making an application of this to the question of one's amenability or
plasticity to the interview? The airship of the interview is for me a
bad ship, and I can't make a bad ship well enough."

Catching Mr. James's words as they came was not very difficult; but
there was that in the manner of his speech that cannot be put on paper,
the delicate difference between the word recalled and the word allowed
to stand, the earnestness of the massive face and alert eye, tempered by
the genial "comment of the body," as R.L. Stevenson has it.

Henry James does not look his seventy years. He has a finely shaped
head, and a face, at once strong and serene, which the painter and the
sculptor may well have liked to interpret. Indeed, in fine appreciation
they have so wrought. Derwent Wood's admirable bust, purchased from last
year's Royal Academy, shown by the Chantrey Fund, will be permanently
placed in the Tate Gallery, and those who fortunately know Sargent's
fine portrait, to be exhibited in the Sargent Room at the San Francisco
Exhibition, will recall its having been slashed into last year by the
militant suffragettes, though now happily restored to such effect that
no trace of the outrage remains.

Mr. James has a mobile mouth, a straight nose, a forehead which has
thrust back the hair from the top of his commanding head, although it is
thick at the sides over the ears, and repeats in its soft gray the color
of his kindly eyes. Before taking in these physical facts one receives
an impression of benignity and amenity not often conveyed, even by the
most distinguished. And, taking advantage of this amiability, I asked if
certain words just used should be followed by a dash, and even boldly
added: "Are you not famous, Mr. James, for the use of dashes?"

"Dash my fame!" he impatiently replied. "And remember, please, that
dogmatizing about punctuation is exactly as foolish as dogmatizing about
any other form of communication with the reader. All such forms depend
on the kind of thing one is doing and the kind of effect one intends to
prod