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<text>
<front>
<tPage>
<dTitle type=main>The Ambassadors </dTitle>
<byLine>by 
<dAuthor>Henry James</dAuthor></byLine>
<dImprint>New York Edition (1909).</dImprint>
</tPage>
<div type=preface>
<head>Preface to the 1909 Edition</head>
<p>Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of &odq;The Ambassadors,&cdq; 
which first appeared in twelve numbers of <hi>The North American Review</hi>
(1903) and was published as a whole the same year. The situation 
involved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of 
Book Fifth, for the reader's benefit, into as few words as possible&mdash; 
planted or &odq;sunk,&cdq; stiffly and saliently, in the centre of the current, 
almost perhaps to the obstruction of traffic.  Never can a composition 
of this sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion, 
and never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet 
lurked more in the mass as an independent particle.  The whole case, 
in fine, is . . .