A Miscellany of MenChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
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A Miscellany of Men
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
English essays -- 20th century
Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest
morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his Saturday
article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in. He wildly
calls to somebody (probably the gardener) to telephone to somewhere for
a messenger; he barricades himself in another room and tears his hair,
wondering what on earth he shall write about. A drumming of fists on
the door outside and a cheerful bellowing encourage and clarify his
thoughts; and he is able to observe some newspapers and circulars in
wrappers lying on the table. One is a dingy book catalogue; the second
is a shiny pamphlet about petrol; the third is a paper called The
Christian Commonwealth. He opens it anyhow, and sees in the middle of a
page a sentence with which he honestly disagrees. It says that the sense
of beauty in Nature is a new thing, hardly felt before Wordsworth. A
stream of images and pictures pour through his head, like skies chasing
each other or forests running by. “Not felt before Wordsworth!” he
thinks. “Oh, but this won't do... bare ruined choirs where late the
sweet birds sang... night's candles are burnt out... glowed with living
sapphires... leaving their moon-loved maze... antique roots fantastic...
antique roots wreathed high... what is it in As You Like It?”
He sits down desperately; the messenger rings at the bell; the children
drum on the door; the servants run up from time to time to say the
messenger is getting bored; and the pencil staggers along, making
the world a present of fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making
Shakespeare a present of a portion of Gray's Elegy; putting “fantastic
roots wreathed high” instead of “antique roots peep out.” Then the
journalist sends off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma
of whether a brother should commandeer a sister's necklace because the
sister pinched him at Littlehampton. That is the first scene; that is
how an article is really written.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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