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Part II: The Explanations of Innocent Smith | Gilbert K. Chesterton | |
Chapter III. The Round Road; or, the Desertion Charge |
Page 3 of 13 |
"I asked him how, if he did not know the place, he would know it when he saw it. Here he suddenly ceased to be hazy, and became alarmingly minute. He gave a description of the house detailed enough for an auctioneer. I have forgotten nearly all the details except the last two, which were that the lamp-post was painted green, and that there was a red pillar-box at the corner. "`A red pillar-box!' I cried in astonishment. `Why, the place must be in England!' "`I had forgotten,' he said, nodding heavily. `That is the island's name.' "`But, ~nom du nom~,' I cried testily, `you've just come from England, my boy.' "`They SAID it was England,' said my imbecile, conspiratorially. `They said it was Kent. But Kentish men are such liars one can't believe anything they say.' "`Monsieur,' I said, `you must pardon me. I am elderly, and the ~fumisteries~ of the young men are beyond me. I go by common sense, or, at the largest, by that extension of applied common sense called science.' "`Science!' cried the stranger. `There is only one good things science ever discovered--a good thing, good tidings of great joy-- that the world is round.' "I told him with civility that his words conveyed no impression to my intelligence. `I mean,' he said, `that going right round the world is the shortest way to where you are already.' "`Is it not even shorter,' I asked, `to stop where you are?' "`No, no, no!' he cried emphatically. `That way is long and very weary. At the end of the world, at the back of the dawn, I shall find the wife I really married and the house that is really mine. And that house will have a greener lamp-post and a redder pillar-box. Do you,' he asked with a sudden intensity, `do you never want to rush out of your house in order to find it?' |
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Manalive Gilbert K. Chesterton |
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