【英文原著类】The Wisdom of Father Brown(布朗神父的智慧).pdf

THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
THE WISDOM OF
FATHER BROWN
G. K. CHESTERTON

To LUCIAN OLDERSHAW
1
THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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 wall and the mildest nearest
the window. A tantalum containing three kinds of spirit, all of a liqueur
excellence, stood always on this table of luxury; but the fanciful have
asserted that the whisky, brandy, and rum seemed always to stand at the
same level. Poetry was there: the left-hand corner of the room was lined
with plete a set of English classics as the right hand could show of
English and foreign physiologists. But if one took a volume of Chaucer or
Shelley from that rank, its absence irritated the mind like a gap in a man's
front teeth. One could not say the books were never read; probably they
were, but there was a sense of their being chained to their places, like the
Bibles in the old churches. Dr Hood treated his private book-shelf as if it
were a public library. And if this strict scientific intangibility steeped even
the shelves laden with lyrics and ballads and the tables laden with drink
and o, it goes without saying that yet more of such heath