ity
besiege him incessantly. He has to decide before the awful eyes of
innocence, whether, when a sister has knocked down a brother's
bricks, in revenge for the brother having taken two sweets out of his
turn, it is endurable that the brother should retaliate by scribbling
on the sister's picture-book, and whether such conduct does not
justify the sister in blowing out the brother's unlawfully lit match.

Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest
morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his
Saturday article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in.
He wildly calls to somebody (probably the gardener) to telephone to
somewhere for a messenger; he barricades himself in another room and
tears his hair, wondering what on earth he shall write about. A
drumming of fists on the door outside and a cheerful bellowing
encourage and clarify his thoughts. . . . He sits down desperately;
the messenger rings at the bell; the children drum on the door; the
servants run up from time to time to say the messenger is getting
bored; and the pencil staggers along, making the world a present of
fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making Shakespeare a present
of a portion of Gray's _Elegy_; putting "fantastic roots wreathed
high" instead of "antique roots peep out."* Then the journalist sends
off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma of whether a
brother should commandeer a sister's necklace because the sister
pinched him at Littlehampton.

[* Chesterton had actually made this slip, and the present quotation
is from the article he wrote in apology.]

In the Notebook he had written:

NORTH BERWICK

On the sands I romped with children
Do you blame me that I did not improve myself
By bottling anemones?
But I say that these children will be men and women
And I say that the anemones will not be men and women
(Not just yet, at least, let us say).
And I say that the greatest men of the world might romp with
children
And that I should like to see Shakespeare romping with children
And Browning and Darwin romping with children
And Mr. Gladstone romping with children
And Professor Huxley romping with children
And all the Bishops romping with children;
And I say that if a man had climbed to the stars
And found the secrets of the angels,
The best thing and the m