The world was always good-natured; civil; glad to be amused;
open-armed to any one who amused it; patient with every one who
did not insist on putting himself in its way, or costing it
money; but this was not consideration, still less power in any of
its concrete forms, and applied as well or better to a comic
actor. Certainly a rare soprano or tenor voice earned infinitely
more applause as it gave infinitely more pleasure, even in
America; but one does what one can with one's means, and casting
up one's balance sheet, one expects only a reasonable return on
one's capital. Hay and Adams had risked nothing and never played
for high stakes. King had followed the ambitious course. He had
played for many millions. He had more than once come close to a
great success, but the result was still in doubt, and meanwhile
he was passing the best years of his life underground. For
companionship he was mostly lost.
Thus, in 1892, neither Hay, King, nor Adams knew whether they
had attained success, or how to estimate it, or what to call it;
and the American people seemed to have no clearer idea than they.
Indeed, the American people had no idea at all; they were
wandering in a wilderness much more sandy than the Hebrews had
ever trodden about Sinai; they had neither serpents nor golden
calves to worship. They had lost the sense of worship; for the
idea that they worshipped money seemed a delusion.
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