"Oh, yes," he replied. "Ingersoll can fill the Metropolitan Opera House any day, and have five thousand dollars in the house."
Certainly that is a curious way to speak of a great orator, a great writer, and a great thinker.
I need not say that I am now speaking of the ordinary American, not the man of refinement.
It would be quite possible for an actress to attract large audiences all through a tour from New York to San Francisco, not because of incontestable talent, but because she travelled in a magnificent palace-car of her own.
I saw, in an American paper, the appearance of Miss Minnie Palmer spoken of in the following terms:
"Minnie Palmer will wear all her diamonds in the third act."
The booking-office was besieged all day, and in the evening money was refused. An amusing detail was the arrival of a good fourth of the audience at ten o'clock, to see the diamonds in the third act.
This necessity for being rich is the reverse side of the medal in America, where, more than anywhere else, talent without money is a useless tool.
America suffers from this state of things. The country's genius, instead of consecrating all its time to the production of works which would tend to elevate the ideas and aspirations of the people, is obliged to think of money-making.
"Ah! my friend," said one of America's most graceful bards to me one day as he touched his forehead, "it seems to me that I have something there, that I possess the feu sacré, and that I might do a little share of good by my writings. But how write poems, when there are rumours of panic in Wall Street?——Excuse me, I have not a moment to lose; I must rush to the Stock Exchange."