that morning concerning his idea of heaven, he would never have
dreamed of describing gold-paved streets, crystal pillars, jewelled
gates, and thrones of ivory. He would have told you that the woods on
a damp sunny May morning was heaven. He only opened his soul to
beauty, and steadily climbed the hill to the crest, and then down the
other side to the rich, half-shaded, half-open spaces, where big, rough
mushrooms sprang in a night.'

Yes, a mushroom morning was heaven to the Harvester. And it was the
mushrooms that led him the first step of the way towards the discovery
of his dream-girl. The mushrooms represented the first of those golden
stairs by which he climbed to his paradise. And Mr. Chesterton does
not like mushrooms! What would the Harvester have said to Mr.
Chesterton?

One faint, struggling glimmer of hope I am delighted to discover. Mr.
Chesterton likens _Little_ Bethel to a _monstrous_ mushroom. There can
be only one reason for this inartistic mixture of analogy and
antithesis. Mr. Chesterton evidently knows that a large mushroom is
not so sweet or so toothsome as a small one. A 'monstrous mushroom,'
even to those who like mushrooms, is coarse and less tasty. Now the
gleam of hope lies in the circumstance that Mr. Chesterton knows the
fine gradations of niceness (or nastiness) that distinguish mushrooms
of one size from mushrooms of another. As a rule, if you get to know a
thing, you get to like it. Mr. Chesterton is coming to know mushrooms.
He will soon be ordering them for breakfast. He may even come, like
certain tribes mentioned in the _Encyclopaedia_, to eat nothing else!
And by that time he may have come to know Little Bethel. And if he
comes to know it, he may come to like it. He will still liken it to a
mushroom. But we shall be able to tell, by the way he says it, that he
means that it is very good. We shall see at once that Mr. Chesterton
likes mushrooms. At present, however, the stern fact remains. Mr.
Chesterton does _not_ like mushrooms. Richard Jefferies, in his
_Amateur Poacher_, says that mushrooms are good either raw or cooked.
The great naturalist is therefore altogether on the side of the
_Encyclopaedia_. 'Some eat mushrooms raw, fresh as taken from the
ground, with a little salt; but to me the taste is then too strong.'
Perhaps that is how Mr. Chesterton has taken his mushrooms--_and Little
Bethel_!' Of the many ways of cooking mushrooms,' Richard Jefferies
go