DOI Artikel:
James, Henry: The next time
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0038
The Next Time
34
saw that he was excited, and he admitted that he was : he had
waked out of a trance. He had been on the wrong tack ; he had
piled mistake on mistake. It was the vision of his remedy that
now excited him : ineffably, grotesquely simple, it had yet come
to him only within a day or two. No, he wouldn’t tell me what
it was : he would give me the night to guess, and if I shouldn’t
guess it would be because I was as big an ass as himself. How-
ever, a lone man might be an ass : it was nobody’s business. He
had five people to carry, and the back must be adjusted to the
burden. He was just going to adjust his back. As to the editor-
ship, it was simply heaven-sent, being not at all another case of
The Blackport Beacon, but a case of the very opposite. The
proprietor, the great Mr. Bousefield, had approached him precisely
because his name, which was to be on the cover, didn't represent
the chatty. The whole thing was to be—oh, on fiddling little
lines, of course—a protest against the chatty. Bousefield wanted
him to be himself; it was for himself Bousefield had picked him
out. Wasn’t it beautiful and brave of Bousefield ? He wanted
literature, he saw the great reaction coming, the way the cat was
going to jump. “Where will you get literature?” I wofully
asked ; to which he replied with a laugh that what he had to get
was not literature, but only what Bousefield would take for it.
In that single phrase, without more ado, I discovered his
famous remedy. What was before him for the future was not to
do his work, but to do what somebody else would take for it. I
had the question out with him on the next opportunity, and of all
the lively discussions into which we had been destined to drift it
lingers in my mind as the liveliest. This was not, I hasten to
add, because I disputed his conclusions : it was an effect of the
very force with which, when I had fathomed his wretched
premises, I embraced them. It was very well to talk, with Jane
Highmore,
34
saw that he was excited, and he admitted that he was : he had
waked out of a trance. He had been on the wrong tack ; he had
piled mistake on mistake. It was the vision of his remedy that
now excited him : ineffably, grotesquely simple, it had yet come
to him only within a day or two. No, he wouldn’t tell me what
it was : he would give me the night to guess, and if I shouldn’t
guess it would be because I was as big an ass as himself. How-
ever, a lone man might be an ass : it was nobody’s business. He
had five people to carry, and the back must be adjusted to the
burden. He was just going to adjust his back. As to the editor-
ship, it was simply heaven-sent, being not at all another case of
The Blackport Beacon, but a case of the very opposite. The
proprietor, the great Mr. Bousefield, had approached him precisely
because his name, which was to be on the cover, didn't represent
the chatty. The whole thing was to be—oh, on fiddling little
lines, of course—a protest against the chatty. Bousefield wanted
him to be himself; it was for himself Bousefield had picked him
out. Wasn’t it beautiful and brave of Bousefield ? He wanted
literature, he saw the great reaction coming, the way the cat was
going to jump. “Where will you get literature?” I wofully
asked ; to which he replied with a laugh that what he had to get
was not literature, but only what Bousefield would take for it.
In that single phrase, without more ado, I discovered his
famous remedy. What was before him for the future was not to
do his work, but to do what somebody else would take for it. I
had the question out with him on the next opportunity, and of all
the lively discussions into which we had been destined to drift it
lingers in my mind as the liveliest. This was not, I hasten to
add, because I disputed his conclusions : it was an effect of the
very force with which, when I had fathomed his wretched
premises, I embraced them. It was very well to talk, with Jane
Highmore,