es on, 'the simplest is the best; that is, on a gridiron.' Mr.
Chesterton gives the impression that that is precisely how he would
prefer his mushrooms--_and Little Bethel_! For Mr. Chesterton does not
like mushrooms.

The really extraordinary feature of the whole thing is that I like
mushrooms all the better for the very reason that leads Mr. Chesterton
to pour upon them his most withering and pitiless contempt. He hates
them because they spring up in the night. Little Bethel is a
'monstrous mushroom that grows in the moonshine.' It is perfectly true
that Little Bethel, like the mushrooms, flourished in the darkness.
Like Mark Tapley, she was at her brightest when her surroundings were
most dreary. In this respect both the meeting-house and the mushrooms
are in excellent company. Many fine things grow in the night. Indeed,
Sir James Crichton-Browne, the great doctor, in his lecture on 'Sleep,'
argues that all things that grow at all grow in the night. Night is
Nature's growing-time. Now Michael Fairless shared Richard Jefferies'
fondness for mushrooms. Every reader of _The Roadmender_ will recall
the night in the woods. 'Through the still night I heard the
nightingales calling, calling, calling, until I could bear it no
longer, and went softly out into the luminous dark. The wood was
manifold with sound. I heard my little brothers who move by night
rustling in grass and tree; and above and through it all the
nightingales sang and sang and sang! The night wind bent the listening
trees, and the stars yearned earthwards to hear the song of deathless
love. Louder and louder the wonderful notes rose and fell in a passion
of melody, and then sank to rest on that low thrilling call which it is
said Death once heard and stayed his hand. At last there was silence.
The grey dawn awoke and stole with trailing robes across earth's floor.
Gathering a pile of mushrooms--_children of the night_--I hasten home.'

The nightingales--the _singers_ of the night!

The mushrooms--the _children_ of the night!

These _singers_ of the night, and these '_children_ of the night,'
almost remind me of Faber:

Angels of Jesus, angels of light,
Singing to welcome the pilgrims of the night!

But Mr. Chesterton does not like 'the _children_ of the night.'

Now we must really learn better manners. It will not do to treat
things contemptuously either because they spring up suddenly, or
because they spring up in the night.