The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Club of Queer Trades, by G. K. Chesterton

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Title: The Club of Queer Trades

Author: G. K. Chesterton

Posting Date: November 17, 2008 [EBook #1696]
Release Date: April, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES

by G. K. Chesterton

Chapter 1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown

Rabelais, or his wild illustrator Gustave Dore, must have had something
to do with the designing of the things called flats in England
and America. There is something entirely Gargantuan in the idea of
economising space by piling houses on top of each other, front doors
and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets
anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that
the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades. It may be
thought at the first glance that the name would attract and startle the
passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim immense hives.
The passer-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination, the
Montenegro Shipping Agency or the London office of the Rutland Sentinel,
and passes through the twilight passages as one passes through the
twilight corridors of a dream. If the Thugs set up a Strangers'
Assassination Company in one of the great buildings in Norfolk Street,
and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries, no inquiries
would be made. And the Club of Queer Trades reigns in a great edifice
hidden like a fossil in a mighty cliff of fossils.

The nature of this society, such as we afterwards discovered it to be,
is soon and simply told. It is an eccentric and Bohemian Club, of which
the absolute condition of membership lies in this, that the candidate
must have invented the method by which he earns his living. It must be
an entirely new trade. The exact definition of this requirement is given
in the two principal rules. First, it must not be a mere application or
variation of an existing trade. Thus, for instance, the Club would
not admit an insurance ag