No true artist could be entirely happy to look at the world from the financier’s standpoint. He may listen attentively to the cunning of expediency fascinatingly unfolded, for his own good, for the good of his family, and the assurance of the future, he may heartily wish to exchange temperaments with that financier, temporarily, till he shall have gained independence of the world commercial, in vain. The unaccommodating
GREEN TREE INN—GERMANTOWN.
temperament again will not let him. He is perfectly aware that there is not half enough in the world to go round, and that he must divert the earnings of other people somewhat into his own coffers if he is to be entirely comfortable; but he had rather that circumstances divert these earnings than his own cupidity. He hopes that God will, after a little, see how hard He has made it for the people individually, and order a new dispensation. It may be a forlorn hope, but it is none the less a hope divinely implanted in every true artist and in every other charitable nature. What else is it that applauds the dramatic note whenever and wherever it is struck, even though it be the Laura Jean Libby kind from the melodrama and the threadbare theme of the indigent heroine who arraigns the conventional villain thus—
“I’d rather be the poor working-girl that I am than all your cruel gold can make me!”
These are the sentiments which reflect those of every true artist. The profession of architecture even more than that of the ministry should be entered without hope of much financial gain. For the sake of goodness don’t believe any such Munchhausen stuff about it as you, perhaps, read in a popular magazine lately. The preacher’s service to God is direct, something which He must take into consideration at least every Sunday; while the service of the architect is indirect—so subtle indeed as to create the natural fear in a student’s mind lest God forget about him entirely, even to the barest livelihood. Professor Ware of the school of architecture at Columbia College once told me that if he paused for one moment to consider how very few of the new class of pupils which every year assembled to be instructed could succeed by reason of the inexorable laws of supply and demand alone, he could not teach them. “But,” he added with a twinkle of satisfaction in his eye for having placed his finger squarely on a grim but unerring philosophy—“I had much rather starve to death in a profession that I loved than in a business that I hated, since success in everything is achieved only by the same meagre percentage.”
I am not forgetting that the profession of architecture is frequently turned into a business enterprise, run