The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
the revolving Eastern mind, as the Franciscan said in Jerusalem,
do something at last.
Anyhow, although I carried none of the trappings of a pilgrim I felt
strongly disposed to take the privileges of one. I wanted to be
entertained at the firesides of total strangers, in the medieval manner,
and to tell them interminable tales of my travels. I wanted to linger
in Dover, and try it on the citizens of that town. I nearly got
out of the train at several wayside stations, where I saw secluded
cottages which might be brightened by a little news from the Holy Land.
For it seemed to me that all my fellow-countrymen must be my friends;
all these English places had come much closer together after travels
that seemed in comparison as vast as the spaces between the stars.
The hop-fields of Kent seemed to me like outlying parts of my own
kitchen garden; and London itself to be really situated at London End.
London was perhaps the largest of the suburbs of Beaconsfield.
By the time I came to Beaconsfield itself, dusk was dropping
over the beechwoods and the white cross-roads. The distance seemed
to grow deeper and richer with darkness as I went up the long
lanes towards my home; and in that distance, as I drew nearer,
I heard the barking of a dog.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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