A young would-be writer takes lodgings at a modest Geneva boarding-house to study human nature, as Stendhal advised. There he watches two American families: the weary businessman Mr. Ruck, whose wife and daughter want only to shop, and the cultivated Mrs. Church, who drags her daughter Aurora round Europe in search of refinement the girl does not want.
A sharp, comic novella from James’s early international period, a fine short way into his work. Download the free EPUB.