There was another Exhibition going on, as it always goes on, in the town,
for the People's Park has very little verdure and consists almost
entirely of side-shows and open-air restaurants. I saw swings and
merry-go-rounds, a circus, and a marionette theatre, and heard Punch and
Judy discussing their domestic differences in Hungarian, and Toby barking
in the same uncouth tongue. The joy with which the public greeted each
crack on the head administered by Herr Punch's stick showed me how
hopeless it was to write literary plays. For the primitive emotions will
always be the most captivating. A fight must ever beat the most subtle
psychology; and indeed those writers for whom the drama is the art of
manufacturing excitement and suspense must find it difficult to compete
with a lottery drawing, a prize-fight, or a horse-race, where the issue
is known not even to the organiser of the excitement. And this
consideration will show why some books are very successful, the art of
which is very little. Nothing is harder in real life than to put your
back against the wall on a dark staircase and keep three armed men at bay
with your whirling sword. But nothing is easier than for the romantic
writer to dip his pen in ink and say that his hero did that.
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