The Napoleon of Notting Hill by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Author:Gilbert Keith Chesterton [Chesterton, Gilbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_classic

* * *

The headquarters of Provost Adam Wayne and his Commander-in-Chief consisted of a small and somewhat unsuccessful milk-shop at the corner of Pump Street. The blank white morning had only just begun to break over the blank London buildings when Wayne and Turnbull were to be found seated in the cheerless and unswept shop. Wayne had something feminine in his character; he belonged to that class of persons who forget their meals when anything interesting is in hand. He had had nothing for sixteen hours but hurried glasses of milk, and, with a glass standing empty beside him, he was writing and sketching and dotting and crossing out with inconceivable rapidity with a pencil and a piece of paper. Turnbull was of that more masculine type in which a sense of responsibility increases the appetite, and with his sketch-map beside him he was dealing strenuously with a pile of sandwiches in a paper packet, and a tankard of ale from the tavern opposite, whose shutters had just been taken down. Neither of them spoke, and there was no sound in the living stillness except the scratching of Wayne’s pencil and the squealing of an aimless-looking cat. At length Wayne broke the silence by saying:

“Seventeen pounds, eight shillings and nine-pence.”

Turnbull nodded and put his head in the tankard.

“That,” said Wayne, “is not counting the five pounds you took yesterday. What did you do with it?”

“Ah, that is rather interesting!” replied Turnbull, with his mouth full. “I used that five pounds in a kindly and philanthropic act.”

Wayne was gazing with mystification in his queer and innocent eyes.

“I used that five pounds,” continued the other, “in giving no less than forty little London boys rides in hansom cabs.”

“Are you insane?” asked the Provost.

“It is only my light touch,” returned Turnbull. “These hansom-cab rides will raise the tone...raise the tone, my dear fellow...of our London youths, widen their horizon, brace their nervous system, make them acquainted with the various public monuments of our great city. Education, Wayne, education. How many excellent thinkers have pointed out that political reform is useless until we produce a cultured populace. So that twenty years hence, when these boys are grown up...”

“Mad!” said Wayne, laying down his pencil; “and five pounds gone!”

“You are in error,” explained Turnbull. “You grave creatures can never be brought to understand how much quicker work really goes with the assistance of nonsense and good meals. Stripped of its decorative beauties, my statement was strictly accurate. Last night I gave forty half-crowns to forty little boys, and sent them all over London to take hansom cabs. I told them in every case to tell the cabman to bring them to this spot. In half an hour from now the declaration of war will be posted up. At the same time the cabs will have begun to come in, you will have ordered out the guard, the little boys will drive up in state, we shall commandeer the horses for cavalry, use the cabs for

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.