The Wisdom of Father Brown. G. K. Chesterton

      THE

      WISDOM

      of FATHER BROWN

       By

      G. K. CHESTERTON

       First published in 1914

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      To

      Lucian Oldershaw

      Contents

       G. K. Chesterton

       ONE

       THE ABSENCE OF MR GLASS

       TWO

       THE PARADISE OF THIEVES

       THREE

       THE DUEL OF DR HIRSCH

       FOUR

       THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE

       FIVE

       THE MISTAKE OF THE MACHINE

       SIX

       THE HEAD OF CAESAR

       SEVEN

       THE PURPLE WIG

       EIGHT

       THE PERISHING OF THE PENDRAGONS

       NINE

       THE GOD OF THE GONGS

       TEN

       THE SALAD OF COLONEL CRAY

       ELEVEN

       THE STRANGE CRIME OF JOHN BOULNOIS

       TWELVE

       THE FAIRY TALE OF FATHER BROWN

      G. K. Chesterton

      Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English journalist and author, who came of a family of estate-agents. He was born in London on the 29th of May 1874.

      He was educated at St Paul’s school, which he left in 1891 with the idea of studying art. But his natural bent was literary, and he devoted himself mainly to cultivating that means of expression, both in prose and verse; he did occasional reviewing, and had some experience in a publisher’s office.

      In 1900, having already produced a volume of clever poems, The Wild Knight, he definitely took to journalism as a career, and became a regular contributor of signed articles to the Liberal journals, the Speaker and Daily News.

      He established himself from the first as a writer with a distinct personality, combative to a swashbuckling degree, unconventional and dogmatic; and the republication of much of his work in a series of volumes (e.g. Twelve Types, Heretics, Orthodoxy), characterized by much acuteness of criticism, a pungent style, and the capacity of laying down the law with unflagging impetuosity and humour, enhanced his reputation.

      His powers as a writer are best shown in his studies of Browning (in the “English Men of Letters” series) and of Dickens; but these were only rather more ambitious essays among a medley of characteristic utterances, ranging from fiction (including The Napoleon of Notting-hill) to fugitive verse, and from artistic criticism to discussions of ethics and religion.

      — A Biography from

      1911, Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 6

      ONE

      THE ABSENCE OF MR GLASS

      THE consulting-rooms of Dr Orion Hood, the eminent criminologist and specialist in certain moral disorders, lay along the sea-front at Scarborough, in a series of very large and well-lighted french windows, which showed the North Sea like one endless outer wall of blue-green marble. In such a place the sea had something of the monotony of a blue-green dado: for the chambers themselves were ruled throughout by a terrible tidiness not unlike the terrible tidiness of the sea. It must not be supposed that Dr Hood’s apartments excluded luxury, or even poetry. These things were there, in their place; but one felt that they were never allowed out of their place. Luxury was there: there stood upon a special table eight or ten boxes of the best cigars; but they were built upon a plan so that the strongest were always nearest the