, a sylvan object that I can
continue to contemplate with calm? That policeman who lifts his hand
to warn three omnibuses of the peril that they run in encountering my
person, what is he but a shrub shaken for a moment with that blast
of human law which is a thing stronger than anarchy? Gradually this
impression of the woods wears off. But this black-and-white contrast
between the visible and invisible, this deep sense that the one
essential belief is belief in the invisible as against the visible,
is suddenly and sensationally brought back to my mind. Exactly at
the moment when Fleet Street has grown most familiar (that is, most
bewildering and bright), my eye catches a poster of vivid violet, on
which I see written in large black letters these remarkable words:
"Should Shop Assistants Marry?"

.....

When I saw those words everything might just as well have turned upside
down. The men in Fleet Street might have been walking about on their
hands. The cross of St. Paul's might have been hanging in the air upside
down. For I realise that I have really come into a topsy-turvy country;
I have come into the country where men do definitely believe that the
waving of the trees makes the wind. That is to say, they believe
that the material circumstances, however black and twisted, are more
important than the spiritual realities, however powerful and pure.
"Should Shop Assistants Marry?" I am puzzled to think what some periods
and schools of human history would have made of such a question. The
ascetics of the East or of some periods of the early Church would have
thought that the question meant, "Are not shop assistants too saintly,
too much of another world, even to feel the emotions of the sexes?" But
I suppose that is not what the purple poster means. In some pagan cities
it might have meant, "Shall slaves so vile as shop assistants even be
allowed to propagate their abject race?" But I suppose that is not what
the purple poster meant. We must face, I fear, the full insanity of what
it does mean. It does really mean that a section of the human race
is asking whether the primary relations of the two human sexes are
particularly good for modern shops. The human race is asking whether
Adam and Eve are entirely suitable for Marshall and Snelgrove. If this
is not topsy-turvy I cannot imagine what would be. We ask whether
the universal institution will improve our (please God) temporary
institution. Yet I have known many such q