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Title: Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Author: Patrick Braybrooke

Release Date: December 19, 2008 [eBook #27569]

Language: English

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GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON

By the Same Author

ODDMENTS
SUGGESTIVE FRAGMENTS

[Illustration: _G. K. CHESTERTON_

_Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Speaight Ltd.,
London_]

GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON

by

PATRICK BRAYBROOKE

With an Introduction by Arthur F. Thorn

London, MCMXXII
The Chelsea Publishing Company
16 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea

Printed at
The Curwen Press
Plaistow, E. 13

_Preface_

It is certain that up to a point in the evolution of Self most people
find life quite exciting and thrilling. But when middle age arrives,
often prematurely, they forget the thrill and excitements; they become
obsessed by certain other lesser things that are deficient in any kind
of Cosmic Vitality. The thrill goes out of life: a light dies down and
flickers fitfully; existence goes on at a low ebb--something has been
lost. From this numbed condition is born much of the blind anguish of
life.

It is one of the tragedies of human existence that the divine sense of
wonder is eventually destroyed by inexcusable routine and more or less
mechanical living. Mental abandon, the exercise of fancy and
imagination, the function of creative thought--all these things are
squeezed out of the consciousness of man until his primitive enjoyment
of the mystical part of life is affected in a very serious way.

Nothing could be more useful, therefore, tha