He thought this prospect, from a
city-house, almost romantic; and he turned from it back to the interior
illuminated now by a lamp which the parlour-maid had placed on a table
while he stood at the window as to something still more genial and
interesting. The artistic sense in Basil Ransom had not been highly
cultivated; neither (though he had passed his early years as the son of
a rich man) was his conception of material comfort very definite; it
consisted mainly of the vision of plenty of cigars and brandy and water
and newspapers, and a cane-bottomed arm-chair of the right inclination,
from which he could stretch his legs. Nevertheless it seemed to him he
had never seen an interior that was so much an interior as this queer
corridor-shaped drawing-room of his new-found kinswoman; he had never
felt himself in the presence of so much organised privacy or of so many
objects that spoke of habits and tastes. Most of the people he had
hitherto known had no tastes; they had a few habits, but these were not
of a sort that required much upholstery. He had not as yet been in many
houses in New York, and he had never before seen so many accessories.
The general character of the place struck him as Bostonian; this was, in
fact, very much what he had supposed Boston to be.
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