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The American by Henry James - p3-4 1877

...the betrayal of native conditions is a matter of expression even more than of feature...

It had that paucity of detail which is yet not emptiness, that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being committed to nothing in particular, of standing in a posture of general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much at one's own disposal, characteristic of American faces of the clear strain. It was the eye, in this case, the chiefly told the story; an eye which the unacquainted and the expert were singularly blended. It was full of contradictory suggestions; and through it was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of romance you could find in it almost anything you looked for. Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet credulous, positive yet skeptical, confident yet shy, extremely intelligent and extremely good-humoured there was something vaguely defiant in its concessions and something profoundly

125

reassuring in its reserve.

...this horrible Paris hardens one's heart. But it quickens one's wits, and it ends by teaching one a refinement of observation.

p146

In America "growing" men had old heads and young hearts, or at least young morals: here they had young heads and very aged hearts, morals the most grizzled and wrinkled. p.134

You're what must be the most agreeable thing in the world - the consciousness of having brought your pleasure beforehand, having paid for it in advance. You're not a day of reckoning staring you in the face. Your reckonings are over.

p.44

...her husband had somehow found means to be degenerate without the iridescence of decay. People said he was very sociable, but his was as much a matter of course as for a dipped sponge to expand...

p.41