private audience, with a view to seeing whether her public in New York, with their strange mixture of cynical indifference to anything but money, and the even stranger survival of the Puritan spirit, which crops up every now and then as some rare border plant will crop up among the weeds and grasses of a long overgrown garden, would be likely to swallow it. She herself was a little nervous of presenting it there. Bilton, on the other hand, who might be supposed to know the taste of the patrons for whom he catered so successfully, thought it would be an immense success.
' After all, Paris loved it,' he said, as he had a few words with her when they went up to dress for dinner. ' And what is bad enough for Paris is good enough for New York. You may take my word for it that what Paris swallows America will gobble.'
' You mean they are more—more emancipated here?'
' Not at all, but that they are eager to accept anything that has been a success in London or Paris. Why, I produced “ Dram-drinking ” here. Dead failure. I took it to London, where it ran well, and brought it back here. Tremendous success. We Americans, I mean, are entirely devoid of artistic taste. But we give our decided approbation to what other people say is artistic, which, for your purpose and mine, is the same thing. Left to ourselves, we like David Harum. I produce “ Hamlet ” here next week. The house is full for the next month. But alter the name and say it is by a new author, and it won't run a week. The papers, to begin with, would all damn it.'
' But the critics. Do you mean they don't know “ Hamlet ” ?'
' There are no critics, and they don't know anything. They are violent ignoramuses who write for unreadable papers.'
