Similarly such ability as consists in a gift for personal management often ends its effects, and leaves no trace behind it, as soon as the manager possessing these gifts retires.
But with many forms of ability the case is precisely opposite.

The products of their exercise do not even begin to appear till after--often till long after--the exercise of the ability itself has altogether come to an end.

Let us, for example, take the case of a play; and since socialists are still included among the objectors whom we have in view, let us take one of the popular plays written by Mr.Bernard Shaw.

Such a play, as Mr.Shaw has publicly boasted--for otherwise I should not mention, and should know nothing of his private affairs--brings to its author wealth in the form of amazing royalties; but until it is acted it brings him no royalties at all, and the actors begin with it only when his own efforts are ended.

Moreover, not only do these royalties only begin then, but having once begun, they have no tendency to exhaust themselves.