The earlier group of stories center about a comparatively few types. First, there are the young men of the Roland Mallet, Ralph Touchett order, "highly civilized young Americans," he calls them in _Confidence_, "born to an easy fortune and a tranquil destiny"; "men who conceive of life as a fine art." His novels are full of them, creatures of whim who know nothing of the bitterness of struggle, who drift from capital to capital of Europe mindful only of their own comfort, highly sensitive organisms withal, subject to evanescent emotions which they analyze with minuteness, and brilliant at every point when their intellectual powers are called into play. They talk in witty flashes for hours on end and deliver finished lectures at the call of an epigram. They cannot talk without philosophizing or hear a maiden laugh without analysis. They are brilliant all the time. The conversation of Gilbert Osmond and Mrs. Merle fills Isabel with amazement: "They talked extremely well; it struck her almost as a dramatic entertainment, rehearsed in advance." Page after page they talk in a staccato, breathless profusion of wit, epigram, repartee, verbal jewels worthy of Alexander Pope flying at every opening of the lips--is even French culture as brilliant as this? Mr. Brand in _The Europeans_ listening to the Baroness Münster, bursts out rapturously at last, "Now I suppose that is what is called conversation, real conversation. It is quite the style we have heard about--the style of Madame de Staël, of Madame Récamier." Within this narrow circle of Europe-visiting, highly civilized, occupationless men and women, James is at his best. Had he not been reared by Henry James, Senior? Had he not lived his whole life in the charmed circle of the highly civilized? But once outside of this small area he ceases to be convincing. Of the great mass of the American people he knows but little. He has seen them only at a distance. As some rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb, blacken'd fingers makes her fire ... And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may be, so of James when he attempts to portray the great mass of his countrymen. One needs to examine only the case of Christopher Newman in _The American_. Given a man who left home at eight years of age to work in the mills, who at length manufactures wash tubs, then leather, and at last by sheer Yankee impudence and energy makes himself a millionaire at forty. Thrust this man suddenly into the circles of French nobility, place him in the presence of the Countess de Belgrade and ask yourself if he will talk like this: