dmen. Innocent Smith, of course, the
simple fool, the blithering idiot, is a truly wise man.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Chesterton jeers at this man's "Scottish" ancestry because his
surname was Gordon and he was obviously a Jew. The author is probably
unaware that there are large numbers of Jews bearing that name in
Russia. If he had made his Jew call himself Macpherson, the case would
have been different.

[2] _All Things Considered_, p. 106.

III

THE MAKER OF MAGIC

CHESTERTON'S only play, _Magic_, was written at the suggestion of Mr.
Kenelm Foss and produced by him in November, 1913, at the Little
Theatre, where it enjoyed a run of more than one hundred performances.
This charming thing does not make one wish that Chesterton was an
habitual playwright, for one feels that _Magic_ was a sort of tank into
which its author's dramatic talents had been draining for many
years--although, in actual fact, Chesterton allowed newspaper
interviewers to learn that the play had been written in a very short
space of time. His religious ideas were expressed in _Magic_ with great
neatness. Most perhaps of all his works this is a quotable production.

Patricia Carleon, a niece of the Duke, her guardian, is in the habit of
wandering about his grounds seeing fairies. On the night when her
brother Morris is expected to return from America she is having a
solitary moonlight stroll when she sees a Stranger, "a cloaked figure
with a pointed hood," which last almost covers his face. She naturally
asks him what he is doing there. He replies, mapping out the ground with
his staff:

I have a hat, but not to wear;
I have a sword, but not to slay;
And ever in my bag I bear
A pack of cards, but not to play.

This, he tells her, is the language of fairies. He tells her that
fairies are not small things, but quite the reverse. After a few
sentences have been spoken the prologue comes to an end, and the curtain
rises upon the scene of the play, the drawing-room of the Duke. Here is
seated the Rev. Cyril Smith, a young clergyman, "an honest man and not
an ass." To him enters the Duke's Secretary, to tell him the Duke is
engaged at the moment, but will be down shortly. He is followed by Dr.
Grimthorpe, an elderly agnostic, the red lamp of whose house can be seen
through the open French windows. Smith is erecting a model public-house
in the village, and has come to ask the Duke for a contribution towa