Tremendous Trifles

Tremendous Trifles

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Title: Tremendous Trifles
Author: G.K. Chesterton
Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8092] [This file was first posted on
June 13, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK,
TREMENDOUS TRIFLES ***

TREMENDOUS TRIFLES
by
G. K. Chesterton

Preface
These fleeting sketches are all republished by kind permission of the
Editor of the DAILY NEWS, in which paper they appeared. They
amount to no more than a sort of sporadic diary--a diary recording one
day in twenty which happened to stick in the fancy-- the only kind of
diary the author has ever been able to keep. Even that diary he could
only keep by keeping it in public, for bread and cheese. But trivial as
are the topics they are not utterly without a connecting thread of motive.
As the reader's eye strays, with hearty relief, from these pages, it
probably alights on something, a bed-post or a lamp-post, a window
blind or a wall. It is a thousand to one that the reader is looking at
something that he has never seen: that is, never realised. He could not
write an essay on such a post or wall: he does not know what the post
or wall mean. He could not even write the synopsis of an essay; as "The
Bed-Post; Its Significance--Security Essential to Idea of Sleep--Night
Felt as Infinite--Need of Monumental Architecture," and so on. He
could not sketch in outline his theoretic attitude towards window-blinds,
even in the form of a summary. "The Window-Blind-- Its Analogy to
the Curtain and Veil--Is Modesty Natural? --Worship of and Avoidance
of the Sun, etc., etc." None of us think enough of these things on which
the eye rests. But don't let us let the eye rest. Why should the eye be so
lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling facts that run
across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be ocular
athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured cloud. I
have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may
do it better, if anyone else will only try.
Contents

Chapter I
Tremendous Trifles II A Piece of Chalk III The Secret of a Train IV
The Perfect Game V The Extraordinary Cabman VI An Accident VII
The Advantages of Having One Leg VIII The End of the World IX In
the Place de la Bastille X On Lying in Bed XI The Twelve Men XII
The Wind and the Trees XIII The Dickensian XIV In Topsy-Turvy
Land XV What I Found in My Pocket XVI The Dragon's Grandmother
XVII The Red Angel XVIII The Tower XIX How I Met the President
XX The Giant XXI The Great Man XXII The Orthodox Barber XXIII
The Toy Theatre XXIV A Tragedy of Twopence XXV A Cab Ride
Across Country XXVI The Two Noises XXVII Some Policemen and a
Moral XXVIII The Lion XXIX Humanity: An Interlude XXX The
Little Birds Who Won't Sing XXXI The Riddle of the Ivy XXXII The
Travellers in State XXXIII The Prehistoric Railway Station XXXIV
The Diabolist XXXV A Glimpse of My Country XXXVI A Somewhat
Improbable Story XXXVII The Shop of Ghosts XXXVIII The Ballade
of a Strange Town XXXIX The Mystery of a Pageant
I
Tremendous Trifles
Once upon a time there were two little boys who lived chiefly in the
front garden, because their villa was a model one. The front garden was
about the same size as the dinner table; it consisted of four strips of
gravel, a square of turf with some mysterious pieces of cork standing
up in the middle and one flower bed with a row of red daisies. One
morning while they were at play in these romantic grounds, a passing
individual, probably the milkman,