The whole is unerringly expressed in one fortunate phrase--he
will be always "taken in." To be taken in everywhere is to see the
inside of everything. It is the hospitality of circumstance. With
torches and trumpets, like a guest, the greenhorn is taken in by Life.
And the sceptic is cast out by it.--"Charles Dickens."
[Sidenote: _G.K. Chesterton_]
I have often been haunted with a fancy that the creeds of men might be
paralleled and represented in their beverages. Wine might stand for
genuine Catholicism, and ale for genuine Protestantism; for these at
least are real religions, with comfort and strength in them. Clean cold
Agnosticism would be clean cold water--an excellent thing if you can get
it. Most modern ethical and idealistic movements might be well
represented by soda-water--which is a fuss about nothing. Mr. Bernard
Shaw's philosophy is exactly like black coffee--it awakens, but it does
not really inspire. Modern hygienic materialism is very like cocoa; it
would be impossible to express one's contempt for it in stronger terms
than that.--"William Blake."
* * * * *
To the quietest human being, seated in the quietest house, there will
sometimes come a sudden and unmeaning hunger for the possibilities or
impossibilities of things; he will abruptly wonder whether the teapot
may not suddenly begin to pour out honey or sea-water, the clock to
point to all hours of the day at once, the candle to burn green or
crimson, the door to open upon a lake or a potato-field instead of a
London street.
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