The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trees of Pride, by G.K. Chesterton

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Title: The Trees of Pride

Author: G.K. Chesterton

Posting Date: November 20, 2008 [EBook #1721]
Release Date: April, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TREES OF PRIDE ***

Produced by Dianne Bean

THE TREES OF PRIDE

by Gilbert K. Chesterton

THE TREES OF PRIDE:

I. THE TALE OF THE PEACOCK TREES
II. THE WAGER OF SQUIRE VANE
III. THE MYSTERY OF THE WELL
IV. THE CHASE AFTER THE TRUTH

THE TREES OF PRIDE

I. THE TALE OF THE PEACOCK TREES

Squire Vane was an elderly schoolboy of English education and Irish
extraction. His English education, at one of the great public schools,
had preserved his intellect perfectly and permanently at the stage of
boyhood. But his Irish extraction subconsciously upset in him the
proper solemnity of an old boy, and sometimes gave him back the brighter
outlook of a naughty boy. He had a bodily impatience which played tricks
upon him almost against his will, and had already rendered him rather
too radiant a failure in civil and diplomatic service. Thus it is true
that compromise is the key of British policy, especially as effecting
an impartiality among the religions of India; but Vane's attempt to meet
the Moslem halfway by kicking off one boot at the gates of the mosque,
was felt not so much to indicate true impartiality as something that
could only be called an aggressive indifference. Again, it is true that
an English aristocrat can hardly enter fully into the feelings of either
party in a quarrel between a Russian Jew and an Orthodox procession
carrying relics; but Vane's idea that the procession might carry the Jew
as well, himself a venerable and historic relic, was misunderstood on
both sides. In short, he was a man who particularly prided himself on
having no nonsense about him; with the result that he was always doing
nonsensical things. He seemed to be standing on his head merely to prove
that he was hard-headed.

He had just finished a hearty breakfast, in the society of his daughter,
at a table under a tree in his garden by the Cornish c