Mr. Chesterton’s argument, failing as it does to prove that he is worth talking to, is still less happy as a defense of the stage soliloquy. A character in a play talks to himself not, as Mr. Chesterton would have us believe, because he is worth talking to, but to enlighten the audience on points which the inexpert playwright has otherwise failed to make plain. The stage soliloquy is only permissible as an indication of the character of one who talks to himself in real life. For instance, if I wished to dramatize G. K. Chesterton, since he often talks to himself, I should have him soliloquize upon the stage. I might make it a double part with two Mr. Chestertons dressed as the two Dromios. As a stage device the soliloquy is only a confession of weakness on the part of the playwright, and has been justly sentenced to death. Its only hope for a reprieve is to retain (at great expense) an ex-president or an eminent K. C. who might argue that since the “fourth wall” of a stage interior is removed in order that the audience may view the actions of the players, it is therefore permissible to remove the “fourth wall” of the players’ heads so that the audience may view the action of their brains. And the ex-president or the eminent K. C. would probably “get away with it.” [Illustration] BUNK When Alexander the Great cut with his sword the Gordian Knot, which had baffled all his efforts to untie with honest fingers, it goes without saying that his impudent performance received the applause of the onlookers. As he stood there, his heavy sword still swaying from the impetus of the stroke and exclaimed with a challenging glare at those before him (and belike an apprehensive glance over his shoulder), “Did I or did I not untie that knot?”—whatever might—nay, must have been the unspoken comment that passed from eye to eye, the answer shouted in unison, was without a shadow of a doubt the Phrygian equivalent of “You sure did!” For the Great God Bunk (whose worshipers are born at the rate of one a minute) is as old as the world itself; and since we have it on good authority that the world is a stage, even though we do not suspect him of a hand in its making, we know the old rogue assisted at the first dress rehearsal famous for all time for the smallness of the cast and the inexpensiveness of the costuming. King Gordius, whose genius contrived the unpickable knot, is now comfortably forgotten, while Alexander who destroyed what he could not understand, still enjoys uneasy immortality; for what is immortality at best but the suspended sentence of Oblivion? And the knot? The hempen hieroglyph that was never solved. When oblivion has overtaken Alexander and even the name of Gordius is forgotten, the world, which is surprisingly young for its age, will still babble wonderingly of the knot that never was and never will be untied.