[The American by Henry James]@TWC D-Link bookThe American CHAPTER V 32/38
It is very well to sneer at money-getting after you have filled your pockets, and Newman, it may be said, should have begun somewhat earlier to moralize thus delicately.
To this it may be answered that he might have made another fortune, if he chose; and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing.
It had come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers. During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs.Tristram, scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of the Avenue d'Iena, and begging to be definitely informed that he had not concocted any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but was coming back sanely and promptly to the most comfortable city in the world.
Newman's answer ran as follows:-- "I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn't expect anything of me.
I don't think I have written twenty letters of pure friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence altogether by telegrams.
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