Alarms and Discursions

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Alarms and Discursions

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Title: Alarms and Discursions
Author: G. K. Chesterton
Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9656] [This file was first posted on October 13, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
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ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS
by G. K. Chesterton

CONTENTS
1: INTRODUCTORY: ON GARGOYLES
2: THE SURRENDER OF A COCKNEY
3: THE NIGHTMARE
4: THE TELEGRAPH POLES
5: A DRAMA OF DOLLS
6: THE MAN AND HIS NEWSPAPER
7: THE APPETITE OF EARTH
8: SIMMONS AND THE SOCIAL TIE
9: CHEESE
10: THE RED TOWN
11: THE FURROWS
12: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIGHT-SEEING
13: A CRIMINAL HEAD
14: THE WRATH OF THE ROSES
15: THE GOLD OF GLASTONBURY
16: THE FUTURISTS
17: DUKES
18: THE GLORY OF GREY
19: THE ANARCHIST
20: HOW I FOUND THE SUPERMAN
21: THE NEW HOUSE
22: THE WINGS OF STONE
23: THE THREE KINDS OF MEN
24: THE STEWARD OF THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS
25: THE FIELD OF BLOOD
26: THE STRANGENESS OF LUXURY
27: THE TRIUMPH OF THE DONKEY
28: THE WHEEL
29: FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIVE
30: ETHANDUNE
31: THE FLAT FREAK
32: THE GARDEN OF THE SEA
33: THE SENTIMENTALIST
34: THE WHITE HORSES
35: THE LONG BOW
36: THE MODERN SCROOGE
37: THE HIGH PLAINS
38: THE CHORUS
39: A ROMANCE OF THE MARSHES

Introductory: On Gargoyles
Alone at some distance from the wasting walls of a disused abbey I found half sunken in the grass the grey and goggle-eyed visage of one of those graven monsters that made the ornamental water-spouts in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. It lay there, scoured by ancient rains or striped by recent fungus, but still looking like the head of some huge dragon slain by a primeval hero. And as I looked at it, I thought of the meaning of the grotesque, and passed into some symbolic reverie of the three great stages of art.

I
Once upon a time there lived upon an island a merry and innocent people, mostly shepherds and tillers of the earth. They were republicans, like all primitive and simple souls; they talked over their affairs under a tree, and the nearest approach they had to a personal ruler was a sort of priest or white witch who said their prayers for them. They worshipped the sun, not idolatrously, but as the golden crown of the god whom all such infants see almost as plainly as the sun.
Now this priest was told by his people to build a great tower, pointing to the sky in salutation of the Sun-god; and he pondered long and heavily before he picked his materials. For he was resolved to use nothing that was not almost as clear and exquisite as sunshine itself; he would use nothing that was not washed as white as the rain can wash the heavens, nothing that did not sparkle as spotlessly as that crown of God. He would have nothing grotesque or obscure; he would not have even anything emphatic or even anything mysterious. He would have all the arches as light as laughter and as candid as logic. He built the temple in three concentric courts, which were cooler and more exquisite in substance each than the other. For the outer wall was a hedge of white lilies, ranked so thick that a green stalk was hardly to be seen; and the wall within that was of crystal, which smashed the sun into a million stars. And the wall within that, which was the tower itself, was a tower of pure water, forced up in an everlasting fountain; and upon the very tip and crest of that foaming spire was one big and blazing diamond, which the water tossed up eternally and caught again as a child catches a ball.
"Now," said the priest, "I have made a tower which is a little worthy of the sun."

II
But about this time the island was caught in a swarm of pirates; and the shepherds had to turn themselves into rude warriors and seamen; and at first they were utterly broken