Tremendous Trifles

G. K. Chesterton

New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1910

Preface

These fleeting sketches are all republished by kind permission of the Editor of the DAILY NEWS, in which paper they appeared. They amount to no more than a sort of sporadic diarya diary recording one day in twenty which happened to stick in the fancy the only kind of diary the author has ever been able to keep. Even that diary he could only keep by keeping it in public, for bread and cheese. But trivial as are the topics they are not utterly without a connecting thread of motive. As the reader's eye strays, with hearty relief, from these pages, it probably alights on something, a bed-post or a lamp-post, a window blind or a wall. It is a thousand to one that the reader is looking at something that he has never seen: that is, never realised. He could not write an essay on such a post or wall: he does not know what the post or wall mean. He could not even write the synopsis of an essay; as "The Bed-Post; Its SignificanceSecurity Essential to Idea of SleepNight Felt as InfiniteNeed of Monumental Architecture," and so on. He could not sketch in outline his theoretic attitude towards window-blinds, even in the form of a summary. "The Window-BlindIts Analogy to the Curtain and VeilIs Modesty Natural?Worship of and Avoidance of the Sun, etc., etc." None of us think enough of these things on which the eye rests. But don't let us let the eye rest. Why should the eye be so lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be ocular athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured cloud. I have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may do it better, if anyone else will only try.

Contents

Chapter I Tremendous Trifles II A Piece of Chalk III The Secret of a Train IV The Perfect Game V The Extraordinary Cabman VI An Accident VII The Advantages of Having One Leg VIII The End of the World IX In the Place de la Bastille X On Lying in Bed XI The Twelve Men XII The Wind and the Trees XIII The Dickensian XIV In Topsy-Turvy Land XV What I Found in My Pocket XVI The Dragon's Grandmother XVII The Red Angel XVIII The Tower XIX How I Met the President XX The Giant XXI The Great Man XXII The Orthodox Barber XXIII The Toy Theatre XXIV A Tragedy of Twopence XXV A Cab Ride Across Country XXVI The Two Noises XXVII Some Policemen and a Moral XXVIII The Lion XXIX Humanity: An Interlude XXX The Little Birds Who Won't Sing XXXI The Riddle of the Ivy XXXII The Travellers in State XXXIII The Prehistoric Railway Station XXXIV The Diabolist XXXV A Glimpse of My Country XXXVI A Somewhat Improbable Story XXXVII The Shop of Ghosts XXXVIII The Ballade of a Strange Town XXXIX The Mystery of a Pageant