task of
cutting certain capers which your ancestors used to cut because they,
in their day, were happy. If you think modern life so pleasant a thing
that you involuntarily prance, rather than walk, down the street, I
dare say your prancing will intensify your joy. Though I happen never
to have met him out-of-doors, I am sure my friend Mr. Gilbert
Chesterton always prances thus--prances in some wild way symbolical of
joy in modern life. His steps, and the movements of his arms and body,
may seem to you crude, casual, and disconnected at first sight; but
that is merely because they are spontaneous. If you studied them
carefully, you would begin to discern a certain rhythm, a certain
harmony. You would at length be able to compose from them a specific
dance--a dance not quite like any other--a dance formally expressive of
new English optimism. If you are not optimistic, don't hope to become
so by practising the steps. But practise them assiduously if you are;
and get your fellow-optimists to practise them with you. You will grow
all the happier through ceremonious expression of a light heart. And
your children and your children's children will dance 'The Chesterton'
when you are no more. May be, a few of them will still be dancing it
now and then, on this or that devious green, even when optimism shall
have withered for ever from the land. Nor will any man mock at the
survival. The dance will have lost nothing of its old grace, and will
have gathered that quality of pathos which makes even unlovely relics
dear to us--that piteousness which Time gives ever to things robbed of
their meaning and their use. Spectators will love it for its melancholy
not less than for its beauty. And I hope no mere spectator will be so
foolish as to say, 'Let us do it' with a view to reviving cheerfulness
at large. I hope it will be held sacred to those in whom it will be a
tradition--a familiar thing handed down from father to son. None but
they will be worthy of it. Others would ruin it. Be sure I trod no
measure with the Morris-dancers whom I saw last May-day.

It was in the wide street of a tiny village near Oxford that I saw
them. Fantastic--high-fantastical--figures they did cut in their
finery. But in demeanour they were quite simple, quite serious, these
eight English peasants. They had trudged hither from the neighbouring
village that was their home. And they danced quite simply, quite
seriously. One of them, I learned, was a cobbler,