When clubs were first established gambling
was everywhere the favourite recreation, so that the working men are
only beginning where their predecessors began sixty years ago.
Of all the Arts the average man, be he gentleman or mechanic, knows
none. He has never learned to play any instrument at all; he cannot
use his voice in taking a part, he cannot paint, draw, carve in wood
or ivory, use a lathe, or make anything that the wide world wants to
use. He cannot write poetry, or drama, or fiction; he is no orator; he
plays no games of cards except whist, and no other games at all of any
kind. What can he do? He can practise the trade he has learned, by
which he makes his money. He knows how to convey property, how to buy
and sell stock and shares, how to carry on business in the City. This,
if you please, is all he knows. And when you propose that the working
man shall, have an opportunity of learning and practising Art in any
of its multitudinous varieties, he laughs derisively, because, which
is a very natural and sensible thing to do, he puts himself in that
man's place, and he knows that he would not be tempted to undergo the
drudgery and the drill of learning one of the Arts, even did that Art
appear to him in the form of a nymph more lovely than Helen of Troy.
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