G. K. Chesterton Manalive - Online indir

We all remember the fairy tales of science in our infancy, which played with the supposition thatlarge animals could jump in the proportion of small ones. If an elephant were as strong as agrasshopper, he could (I suppose) spring clean out of the Zoological Gardens and alight trumpetingupon Primrose Hill. If a whale could leap from the sea like a trout, perhaps men might look up andsee one soaring above Yarmouth like the winged island of Laputa. Such natural energy, thoughsublime, might certainly be inconvenient, and much of this inconvenience attended the gaiety andgood intentions of the man in green. He was too large for everything, because he was lively as wellas large. By a fortunate physical provision, most very substantial creatures are also reposeful; andmiddle-class boarding-houses in the lesser parts of London are not built for a man as big as a bulland excitable as a kitten.When Inglewood followed the stranger into the boarding-house, he found him talking earnestly(and in his own opinion privately) to the helpless Mrs. Duke. That fat, faint lady could only goggleup like a dying fish at the enormous new gentleman, who politely offered himself as a lodger, withvast gestures of the wide white hat in one hand, and the yellow Gladstone bag in the other.Fortunately, Mrs. Duke’s more efficient niece and partner was there to complete the contract; for,indeed, all the people of the house had somehow collected in the room. This fact, in truth, wastypical of the whole episode. The visitor created an atmosphere of comic crisis; and from the timehe came into the house to the time he left it, he somehow the company to gather and evenfollow (though in derision) as children gather and follow a Punch and Judy. An hour ago, and forfour years previously, these people had avoided each other, even when they had really liked eachother. They had slid in and out of dismal and deserted rooms in search of particular newspapers orprivate needlework. Even now they all came casually, as with varying interests; but they all came.There was the embarrassed Inglewood, still a sort of red shadow; there was the unembarrassedWarner, a pallid but solid substance. There was Michael Moon offering like a riddle the contrast ofthe horsy crudeness of his clothes and the sombre sagacity of his visage. He was now joined by hisyet more comic crony, Moses Gould. Swaggering on short legs with a prosperous purple tie, he wasthe gayest of godless little dogs; but like a dog also in this, that however he danced and wagged withdelight, the two dark eyes on each side of his protuberant nose glistened gloomily like black buttons.There was Miss Rosamund Hunt, still with the fine white hat framing her square, good-looking face,and still with her native air of being dressed for some party that never came off. She also, like Mr.Moon, had a new companion, new so far as this narrative goes, but in reality an old friend and aprotegee. This was a slight young woman in dark gray, and in no way notable but for a load of dullred hair, of which the shape somehow gave her pale face that triangular, almost peaked, appearancewhich was given by the lowering headdress and deep rich ruff of the Elizabethan beauties.