On referring
the matter to the box-office, the caliph in charge informed me that
the slaves he allowed to enter his establishment (like those who in
other days formed the court of Louis XIV.) were permitted to
praise, but were suppressed if they murmured dissent. In his
MEMOIRES, Dumas, PERE, tells of a "first night" when three thousand
people applauded a play of his and one spectator hissed. "He was
the only one I respected," said Dumas, "for the piece was bad, and
that criticism spurred me on to improve it."
How can we hope for any improvement in the standard of our
entertainments, the manners of our servants or the ways of
corporations when no one complains? We are too much in a hurry to
follow up a grievance and have it righted. "It doesn't pay," "I
haven't got the time," are phrases with which all such subjects are
dismissed. We will sit in over-heated cars, eat vilely cooked
food, put up with insolence from subordinates, because it is too
much trouble to assert our rights. Is the spirit that prompted the
first shots on Lexington Common becoming extinct? Have the floods
of emigration so diluted our Anglo-Saxon blood that we no longer
care to fight for liberty? Will no patriot arise and lead a revolt
against our tyrants?
I am prepared to follow such a leader, and have already marked my
prey. First, I will slay a certain miscreant who sits at the
receipt of customs in the box-office of an up-town theatre.
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