would flock
to gaze upon the last relic of a pagan England; the Poet Laureate might
so forget himself as to write an 'Epic of the Last Innkeeper'; editors
would be sending lady reporters to give the feminine view of the finish
of drinking; publishers would fall over one another in their eagerness
to secure the 'Memoirs of the Last Publican'; the Salvation Army would
put the last drunkard in the British Museum as a prehistoric specimen;
on the death of this National Hero, the Dean of Westminster would
politely offer the Abbey for a memorial service, with no tickets for the
best places.

Chesterton gives other adventures to this last innkeeper. He is, we
hope, a false prophet for this once. Were there to be no beer perhaps
not even the pen of Chesterton would be able to describe the scenes that
would take place in England.

'THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY'

Anarchy is a very interesting subject and is used to denote very
different things. It may be something that puts a bullet through a king
with the insane hope of ending the monarchy; it may be an act of a
God-fearing Protestant clergyman when he attempts to harry the Catholics
by denying that the crucifix is the proper symbol of the Christian
religion; it may be the act of God when a village is destroyed by an
earthquake or an island created by a seaquake.

'The Man who was Thursday' is about an anarchist, and we are not sure
whether Chesterton is not pulling our respectable legs and laughing that
we really believed the party of desperadoes were real anarchists. The
fact is, the book starts in a highly respectable suburb that might be
anywhere near London and could not be far from it.

There are two poets strolling about under the canopy of a lovely sky;
one believes in anarchy, the other doesn't--the one who does invites the
one who does not to come with him and see what anarchy is. This he does,
and, after a good supper of lobster mayonnaise, the two get down to a
subterranean cavern where are assembled half the anarchists of the
world, precisely six; they call themselves by the names of the week,
with a leader, who is met with later, Sunday.

Syme, the visitor, is appointed as a member, and becomes, Thursday; he
has a great many adventures, including breakfast, overlooking Leicester
Square, and gradually discovers that the said anarchists, unknown at
first to each other, are really Scotland Yard detectives.

The only real anarchist is the poet who believed in it