f black bristles standing out at right angles to
one's face was a positive affair. But the higher criticism teaches us
better. Bristles are merely negative. They are a Shadow where Shaving
should be.

"Well, it all goes on, and I suppose it all means something. But a
baby is the Kingdom of God, and if you try to kiss a baby he will know
whether you are shaved or not. Perhaps I am mixing up being shaved and
being saved; my democratic sympathies have always led me to drop my
'h's.' In another moment I may suggest that goats represent the
lost because goats have long beards. This is growing altogether too
allegorical.

"Nevertheless," I added, as I paid the bill, "I have really been
profoundly interested in what you told me about the New Shaving. Have
you ever heard of a thing called the New theology?"

He smiled and said that he had not.

XXIII. The Toy Theatre

There is only one reason why all grown-up people do not play with toys;
and it is a fair reason. The reason is that playing with toys takes so
very much more time and trouble than anything else. Playing as children
mean playing is the most serious thing in the world; and as soon as we
have small duties or small sorrows we have to abandon to some extent
so enormous and ambitious a plan of life. We have enough strength
for politics and commerce and art and philosophy; we have not enough
strength for play. This is a truth which every one will recognize who,
as a child, has ever played with anything at all; any one who has played
with bricks, any one who has played with dolls, any one who has played
with tin soldiers. My journalistic work, which earns money, is not
pursued with such awful persistency as that work which earned nothing.

.....

Take the case of bricks. If you publish a book to-morrow in twelve
volumes (it would be just like you) on "The Theory and Practice
of European Architecture," your work may be laborious, but it is
fundamentally frivolous. It is not serious as the work of a child piling
one brick on the other is serious; for the simple reason that if your
book is a bad book no one will ever be able ultimately and entirely to
prove to you that it is a bad book. Whereas if his balance of bricks
is a bad balance of bricks, it will simply tumble down. And if I know
anything of children, he will set to work solemnly and sadly to build it
up again. Whereas, if I know anything of authors, nothing would induce
you to write your book again, o