n....' Since then I have
respected the things called inanimate."

And bowing slightly to the mustard-pot, the man in the restaurant
withdrew.

XXXVII. The Shop Of Ghosts

Nearly all the best and most precious things in the universe you can get
for a halfpenny. I make an exception, of course, of the sun, the moon,
the earth, people, stars, thunderstorms, and such trifles. You can get
them for nothing. Also I make an exception of another thing, which I am
not allowed to mention in this paper, and of which the lowest price is a
penny halfpenny. But the general principle will be at once apparent.
In the street behind me, for instance, you can now get a ride on an
electric tram for a halfpenny. To be on an electric tram is to be on
a flying castle in a fairy tale. You can get quite a large number of
brightly coloured sweets for a halfpenny. Also you can get the chance of
reading this article for a halfpenny; along, of course, with other and
irrelevant matter.

But if you want to see what a vast and bewildering array of valuable
things you can get at a halfpenny each you should do as I was doing last
night. I was gluing my nose against the glass of a very small and
dimly lit toy shop in one of the greyest and leanest of the streets
of Battersea. But dim as was that square of light, it was filled (as a
child once said to me) with all the colours God ever made. Those toys of
the poor were like the children who buy them; they were all dirty; but
they were all bright. For my part, I think brightness more important
than cleanliness; since the first is of the soul, and the second of the
body. You must excuse me; I am a democrat; I know I am out of fashion in
the modern world.

.....

As I looked at that palace of pigmy wonders, at small green omnibuses,
at small blue elephants, at small black dolls, and small red Noah's
arks, I must have fallen into some sort of unnatural trance. That lit
shop-window became like the brilliantly lit stage when one is watching
some highly coloured comedy. I forgot the grey houses and the grimy
people behind me as one forgets the dark galleries and the dim crowds
at a theatre. It seemed as if the little objects behind the glass were
small, not because they were toys, but because they were objects far
away. The green omnibus was really a green omnibus, a green Bayswater
omnibus, passing across some huge desert on its ordinary way to
Bayswater. The blue elephant was no longer blue with pai