Oh, you world!
And what would it do? What would it mean? I will tell you a few things that it would mean.
First of all it would mean that the man who felt in him the voice of God would know that there was a road he could travel, would know that there was a home for him. He would no longer face the fearful alternative of mediocrity or starvation. He would no longer be tempted, he would no longer be forced to turn from his faith, and stunt his development, and wreck his plans, by base attempts to compromise between his highest and what the world will pay for. Can you have any idea what that would mean to an artist? You say that you love art! Can you have any idea of the effect which that would have upon art? Upon the art of your country—upon American literature! To have a band of perhaps a hundred—perhaps a thousand, proved and chosen—the best and strongest that could be found—and set free and consecrated to the search for beauty! Try it for fifty years—try it for ten years—try the method of raising your poets in your gardens instead of flinging them into your weed-beds—and see what the result would be! See if in fifty years American literature would not have done more than all the rest of the world!
And what would it cost?—O God! Is there a railroad in this country so small that its earnings would not pay for it—for the whole of the thousand? Why, pay a poet five hundred dollars a year, and he is a rich man; if he is not, he is no poet, but a knave.
And there would be waste?—Yes—where is there not waste? But grant that in the whole thousand there is just one who is a master mind; and that him you set free and keep from defeat—that him with all his glory you make yours—and then tell me if there be any other way in this world that you could have done so much for man with your money!
—No, these are not your ways, oh you cruel world! You let every man go his way—you let him starve, you let him die in any hole that he can find. The poet—tenderest and most sensitive of all men! The poet—the master of the arts of suffering! Exposed on every side, nervous, haunted, unused to the world, knowing how to feel and knowing that alone! Is not his life an agony under any conditions,—is he not tortured for you—the world? And you leave him helpless, despairing!