ustache, lightish in colour against this background.
His expression is extraordinarily innocent; he looks like a monstrous
infant. A tumbled mane tops him off. He sits in his parlour in a very
small chair.

Did I write him when I was coming? Wonder what became of the letter?
Doesn't remember it. Perhaps it is in his dressing gown. Has a habit
of sticking things that interest him into the pocket of his dressing
gown. Where, do you suppose, is his dressing gown? However, no
matter. "Have a cigar. Do have a cigar. Wonder where my cigars are!
Where are my cigars?" Mrs. Chesterton locates them.

Now about that poem, "The Inn at the End of the World," or some such
thing. He is inclined to think that he did write it, but he cannot
remember where it was published. Now he has lost his glasses,
ridiculously small glasses, which he has been continually attempting to
fix firmly upon his nose. Slapping yourself about the chest is an
excellent way to find glasses.

Well, it is very flattering to be told that one is so well known in
America. But so he had heard before. Describes himself as a
"philosophical journalist." Did not know that there was an audience in
America for his kind of writing. Wonders whether democracy as carried
on there "on such a gigantic scale" can keep right on successfully.
Admits a division between our two peoples. "Trenches have been dug
between us," he declares.

Rises to a remark about the Englishman's everlasting garden. "He likes
to have a little fringe about him," he says. And then tells a little
story, which one might say contains all the elements of his art.

When he first came to Beaconsfield, Mr. Chesterton said, the policemen
used to touch their helmets to him, until he told them to stop it.
Because, he said, he felt that rather he should touch his hat to the
policemen. "Saluting the colours, as it were," he explained. "For,"
he added, "are they not officers of the King?"

Mr. Chesterton apologised for being, as he put it, excessively
talkative. This was occasioned, he said, by "worry and fatigue." I
declined to stay for tea, as I noticed a chugging car awaiting in front
of the house. "You must come to see me again," said the grand young
man of England. The last I saw of him he was rolling through his
garden, tossing his mane; the famous garden that rose up and hit him,
you remember, at the time of his unfortunate fall.

Fine time I had with young Walpole. Those En