To Henry James and William James, Jr

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 14, 1907.

Dear Brother and Son,—I dare say that you will be together in Paris when you get this, but I address it to Lamb House all the same. You twain are more "blessed" than I, in the way of correspondence this winter, for you give more than you receive, Bill's letters being as remarkable for wit and humor as Henry's are for copiousness, considering that the market value of what he either writes or types is so many shillings a word. When I write other things, I find it almost impossible to write letters. I've been at it stiddy, however, for three days, since my return from New York, finding, as I did, a great stack of correspondence to attend to. The first impression of New York, if you stay there not more than 36 hours, which has been my limit for twenty years past, is one of repulsion at the clangor, disorder, and permanent earthquake conditions. But this time, installed as I was at the Harvard Club (44th St.) in the centre of the cyclone, I caught the pulse of the machine, took up the rhythm, and vibrated mit, and found it simply magnificent. I'm surprised at you, Henry, not having been more enthusiastic, but perhaps that superbly powerful and beautiful subway was not opened when you were there. It is an entirely new New York, in soul as well as in body, from the old one, which looks like a village in retrospect. The courage, the heaven-scaling audacity of it all, and the lightness withal, as if there was nothing that was not easy, and the great pulses and bounds of progress, so many in directions all simultaneous that the coördination is indefinitely future, give a kind of drumming background of life that I never felt before. I'm sure that once in that movement, and at home, all other places would seem insipid. I observe that your book,—"The American Scene,"—dear H., is just out. I must get it and devour again the chapters relative to New York. On my last night, I dined with Norman Hapgood, along with men who were successfully and happily in the vibration. H. and his most winning-faced young partner, Collier, Jerome, Peter Dunne, F. M. Colby, and Mark Twain. (The latter, poor man, is only good for monologue, in his old age, or for dialogue at best, but he's a dear little genius all the same.) I got such an impression of easy efficiency in the midst of their bewildering conditions of speed and complexity of adjustment. Jerome, particularly, with the world's eyes on his court-room, in the very crux of the Thaw trial, as if he had nothing serious to do. Balzac ought to come to life again. His Rastignac imagination sketched the possibility of it long ago. I lunched, dined, and sometimes breakfasted, out, every day of my stay, vibrated between 44th St., seldom going lower, and 149th, with Columbia University at 116th as my chief relay station, the magnificent space-devouring Subway roaring me back and forth, lecturing to a thousand daily, and having four separate dinners at the Columbia Faculty Club, where colleagues severally compassed me about, many of them being old students of mine, wagged their tongues at me and made me explain. It was certainly the high tide of my existence, so far as energizing and being "recognized" were concerned, but I took it all very "easy" and am hardly a bit tired. Total abstinence from every stimulant whatever is the one condition of living at a rapid pace. I am now going whack at the writing of the rest of the lectures, which will be more original and (I believe) important than my previous works....