{"product_id":"2940012557957","title":"The Ambassadors","description":"\"The Ambassadors\" had been, all conveniently, \"arranged for\"; its first\u003cbr\u003eappearance was from month to month, in the _North American Review_\u003cbr\u003eduring 1903, and I had been open from far back to any pleasant\u003cbr\u003eprovocation for ingenuity that might reside in one's actively\u003cbr\u003eadopting--so as to make it, in its way, a small compositional\u003cbr\u003elaw--recurrent breaks and resumptions.  I had made up my mind here\u003cbr\u003eregularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts--having\u003cbr\u003efound, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question of form\u003cbr\u003eand pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the major\u003cbr\u003epropriety, recognised as soon as really weighed; that of employing but\u003cbr\u003eone centre and keeping it all within my hero's compass. The thing was\u003cbr\u003eto be so much this worthy's intimate adventure that even the projection\u003cbr\u003eof his consciousness upon it from beginning to end without intermission\u003cbr\u003eor deviation would probably still leave a part of its value for him,\u003cbr\u003eand a fortiori for ourselves, unexpressed. I might, however, express\u003cbr\u003eevery grain of it that there would be room for--on condition of\u003cbr\u003econtriving a splendid particular economy. Other persons in no small\u003cbr\u003enumber were to people the scene, and each with his or her axe to grind,\u003cbr\u003ehis or her situation to treat, his or her coherency not to fail of, his\u003cbr\u003eor her relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry\u003cbr\u003eon.  But Strether's sense of these things, and Strether's only, should\u003cbr\u003eavail me for showing them; I should know them but through his more or\u003cbr\u003eless groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure\u003cbr\u003eamong his most interesting motions, and a full observance of the rich\u003cbr\u003erigour I speak of would give me more of the effect I should be most\u003cbr\u003e\"after\" than all other possible observances together.  It would give me\u003cbr\u003ea large unity, and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which\u003cbr\u003ethe enlightened story-teller will at any time, for his interest,\u003cbr\u003esacrifice if need be all other graces whatever.  I refer of course to\u003cbr\u003ethe grace of intensity, which there are ways of signally achieving and\u003cbr\u003eways of signally missing--as we see it, all round us, helplessly and\u003cbr\u003ewoefully missed.  Not that it isn't, on the other hand, a virtue\u003cbr\u003eeminently subject to appreciation--there being no strict, no absolute\u003cbr\u003emeasure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite\u003cbr\u003eescaped one's perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully\u003cbr\u003ehailed it.  After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense\u003cbr\u003eamusement of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not\u003cbr\u003eoperate, for the fond fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as\u003cbr\u003ehis best of determinants.  That charming principle is always there, at\u003cbr\u003eall events, to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember,\u003cbr\u003eessentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy, appeased with\u003cbr\u003eno cheap nor easy nourishment.  It enjoys the costly sacrifice and\u003cbr\u003erejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty--even as ogres, with\u003cbr\u003etheir \"Fee-faw-fum!\" rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so\u003cbr\u003espeedy, definition of my gentleman's job--his coming out, all solemnly\u003cbr\u003eappointed and deputed, to \"save\" Chad, and his then finding the young\u003cbr\u003eman so disobligingly and, at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a\u003cbr\u003enew issue altogether, in the connexion, prodigiously faces them, which\u003cbr\u003ehas to be dealt with in a new light--promised as many calls on\u003cbr\u003eingenuity and on the higher branches of the compositional art as one\u003cbr\u003ecould possibly desire. Again and yet again, as, from book to book, I\u003cbr\u003eproceed with my survey, I find no source of interest equal to this\u003cbr\u003everification after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail\u003cbr\u003ethe better, of the scheme of consistency \"gone in\" for.  As","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47069413048560,"sku":"2940012557957","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012557957_p0.jpg?v=1763570280","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012557957","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}