The Patagonia

The Patagonia, by Henry James
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Title: The Patagonia
Author: Henry James Release Date: May 21, 2005 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) [eBook #2427]
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PATAGONIA***
Transcribed from the 1922 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. Proofing by Jonesey and Richard Carpenter
THE PATAGONIA by Henry James
CHAPTER I
The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls. As “every one” was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables. The heat was insufferable and I thought with joy of the morrow, of the deck of the
steamer, the freshening breeze, the sense of getting out to sea. I was even glad of what I had learned in the afternoon at the office of the company—that at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower ...