Читать книгу Judgments in Vacation онлайн

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As in politics, so in business, for here no sane man will be heard to deny that the Box Office test is the only test of merit. If the balance sheet is adverse, the business man may be a man of culture, brain-power, intellect, sentiment and good manners, but as a business man he is not a success, and Nature kindly extinguishes him and automatically removes him from a field of energy for which he is unfitted. It is really unfortunate that one cannot have a moral, social, and literary Bankruptcy Court, where, applying the Box Office test, actors, authors, artists, and statesmen might file their petitions and be adjudged politically, or histrionically, or artistically bankrupt, as the case might be, and obtain a certificate of the Court, permitting them to open a fried-fish shop, to start a newspaper, or to enter upon some simpler occupation which, upon evidence given, it might appear they are really fitted for.

It is the vogue to-day for those claiming to possess the literary and artistic temperament to shrink with very theatrical emphasis from the Box Office. They point out how the Box Office of to-day overrules the Box Office of yesterday, forgetting that the Box Office of to-morrow may reinstate the judgment of the inferior Court. Even if the Box Office is as uncertain as the law, it is also as powerful as the law. Of course a painter or writer has the advantage over the actor—if it be one—of appealing to a smaller Box Office to-day, in the hopes of attracting a large Box Office to-morrow. A man can write and paint to please a coming generation, but a man cannot act, or bring in Bills in Parliament, or bake or brew, or make candlesticks for anyone else than his fellow living men. Not that, for myself, I think there have ever been many writers or artists who wrote and painted for future generations. On the contrary, they wrote and painted largely to please themselves, but in so far as they cared for their wives and children, with an eye on the Box Office, and in most cases it was only because their business arrangements were mismanaged that their own generations failed to pay to come in. These failures were the exception. The greatest men, such as Shakespeare and Dickens, were immediate Box Office successes—others were Box Office successes in their own day, but have not stood the test of time. Nevertheless, it is something to succeed at any Box Office, even if the success be only temporary. Every man cannot be a Prime Minister, but is that any reason why he should not aspire to a seat on the Parish Council? When one turns to the lives of authors and artists, one does not find that the wisest and best were men who despised the test of the Box Office.