dy
from the Sea, he could no longer keep his symbols and his characters
apart. It is a more subtle change, a combination of several small
changes, which cannot be studied fairly in relation only to one side of
Chesterton's work. In the last chapter an attempt will be made to
analyze these, for the present I can only indicate some of the
fallings-off noticeable in _Manalive_, and leave it at that.
Chesterton's previous romances were not constructed, the reader may have
gathered, with that minute attention to detail which makes some modern
novels read like the report of a newly promoted detective. But a man may
do such things and yet be considered spotless. Shakespeare, after all,
went astray on several points of history and geography. The authors of
the Old Testament talked about "the hare that cheweth the cud." And, if
any reader should fail to see the application of these instances to
modern fiction, I can only recommend him to read Vanity Fair and find
out how many children had the Rev. Bute Crawley, and what were their
names. No, the trouble with _Manalive_ is not in its casual,
happy-go-lucky construction. It is rather in a certain lack of ease, a
tendency to exaggerate effects, a continual stirring up of
inconsiderable points. But let us come to the story.

There is a boarding-house situated on one of the summits of the Northern
Heights. A great wind happens, and a large man, quite literally, blows
in. His name is Innocent Smith and he is naturally considered insane.
But he is really almost excessively sane. His presence makes life at the
house a sort of holiday for the inmates, male and female. Smith is about
to run for a special licence in order to marry one of the women in the
house, and the other boarders have just paired off when a telegram
posted by one of the ladies in a misapprehension brings two lunacy
experts around in a cab. Smith adds to the excitement of the moment by
putting a couple of bullets through a doctor's hat.

Now Smith is what somebody calls "an allegorical practical joker." But
Chesterton gives a better description of him than that.

He's comic just because he's so startlingly
commonplace. Don't you know what it is to be in
all one family circle, with aunts and uncles, when
a schoolboy comes home for the holidays? That bag
there on the cab is only a schoolboy's hamper.
This tree here in the garden is only the sort of