ts the real obstacles have been the weaknesses one knows to
be wrong, and not the doubts that might be relatively right, or at
least rational. I suppose all this is a common story; and I hope so;
for wanting to be uncommon is really not one of my weaknesses. They
are worse, probably, but they are not that. There are other and in
the ordinary sense more cheerful things I would like to talk of;
things I think we could both do for causes we certainly agree about.
Meanwhile, thank you for everything; and be sure I think of you very
much.

Yours always,

G. K. CHESTERTON.

MY DEAR MAURICE,

This is the shortest, hastiest and worst written letter in the
world. It only tells you three things: (1) that I thank you a
thousand times for the book; (2) that I have to leave for America for
a month or two, earlier than I expected; But I am glad, for I shall
see something of Frances, without walls of work between us; and (3)
that I have pretty well made up my mind about the thing we talked
about. Fortunately, the thing we talked about can be found all over
the world.

Yours always,

G. K. CHESTERTON.

I will not write here of the American scene but will talk of it in a
later chapter along with the second tour Gilbert made in the States.
It seems best to complete now the story of his journey of the mind. A
reserved man tells more of himself indirectly than directly. Readers
of the _Autobiography_ complain that it is concerned with everything
in the world except G. K. Chesterton. You can certainly search its
pages in vain for any account of the process of his conversion: for
that you must look elsewhere: in the poems to Our lady, in _The
Catholic Church and Conversion_, in _The Well and the Shallows_, and
in the letters here to be quoted.

In _The Catholic Church and Conversion_ he sketches the three phases
through which most converts pass, all of which he had himself
experienced. He sums them up as "patronizing the Church, discovering
the Church, and running away from the Church." In the first phase a
man is taking trouble ("and taking trouble has certainly never been a
particular weakness of mine") to find out the fallacy in most
anti-Catholic ideas. In the second stage he is gradually discovering
the great ideas enshrined in the Church and hitherto hidden from him.
"It is these numberless glimpses of great ideas, that have been
hidden from the convert by the p