ntinent in behalf of the "average American girl" supposed to be
satirized in Daisy Miller, and prevented the perception of the fact
that, so far as the average American girl was studied at all in Daisy
Miller, her indestructible innocence, her invulnerable new-worldliness,
had never been so delicately appreciated. It was so plain that Mr.
James disliked her vulgar conditions, that the very people to whom he
revealed her essential sweetness and light were furious that he should
have seemed not to see what existed through him. In other words, they
would have liked him better if he had been a worse artist--if he had
been a little more confidential.

But that artistic impartiality which puzzled so many in the treatment
of Daisy Miller is one of the qualities most valuable in the eyes of
those who care how things are done, and I am not sure that it is not
Mr. James's most characteristic quality. As "frost performs the effect
of fire," this impartiality comes at last to the same result as
sympathy. We may be quite sure that Mr. James does not like the
peculiar phase of our civilization typified in Henrietta Stackpole; but
he treats her with such exquisite justice that he lets US like her. It
is an extreme case, but I confidently allege it in proof.

His impartiality is part of the reserve with which he works in most
respects, and which at first glance makes us say that he is wanting in
humor. But I feel pretty certain that Mr. James has not been able to
disinherit himself to this degree. We Americans are terribly in
earnest about making ourselves, individually and collectively; but I
fancy that our prevailing mood in the face of all problems is that of
an abiding faith which can afford to be funny. He has himself
indicated that we have, as a nation, as a people, our joke, and every
one of us is in the joke more or less. We may, some of us, dislike it
extremely, disapprove it wholly, and even abhor it, but we are in the
joke all the same, and no one of us is safe from becoming the great
American humorist at any given moment. The danger is not apparent in
Mr. James's case, and I confess that I read him with a relief in the
comparative immunity that he affords from the national facetiousness.
Many of his people are humorously imagined, or rather humorously SEEN,
like Daisy Miller's mother, but these do not give a dominant color; the
business in hand is commonly serious, and the droll people are
subordinated. They abo