Manalive

“A wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. It a million holes and corners it refreshed a man like a flagon, and astonished him like a blow. In the inmost chambers of intricate and embowered houses it woke like a domestic explosion, littering the floor with some professor’s papers till they seemed as precious as fugitive, or blowing out the candle by which a boy read Treasure Island and wrapping him in roaring dark. But everywhere it bore drama into undramatic lives, and carried the trump of crisis across the world. Many a harassed mother in a mean backyard had looked at a five dwarfish shirts on the clothes-line as at some small, sick tragedy; it was as if she had hanged her five children. . . .” * Chesterton was always concerned with the problems facing the modern man. Of course, he observes, we are far from perfect — and at some point we will do wrong. But here Chesterton goes a bit further, showing us that many things we have been taught are wrong — aren’t innately wrong at all. . . .