morning," which "had a sort of wonder in it, as if the world were as
new as myself." A child in this world, like God in the moment of
creation, looks upon it and sees that it is very good. It was not
that he was never unhappy as a child, and he had his share of bodily
pain. "I had a fair amount of toothache and especially earache." But
the child has his own philosophy and makes his own proportion, and
unhappiness and pain "are of a different texture or held on a
different tenure."

What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a
wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a
miraculous world. What gives me this shock is almost anything I
really recall; not the things I should think most worth recalling.
This is where it differs from the other great thrill of the past, all
that is connected with first love and the romantic passion; for that,
though equally poignant, comes always to a point; and is narrow like
a rapier piercing the heart, whereas the other was more like a
hundred windows opened on all sides of the head.*

[* _Autobiography_, pp. 31-32.]

These windows opening on all sides so much more swiftly for the
genius than for the rest of us, led to a result often to be noted in
the childhood of exceptional men: a combination of backwardness and
precocity. Gilbert Chesterton was in some ways a very backward child.
He did not talk much before three. He learnt to read only at eight.

He loved fairy tales; as a child he read them or had them read aloud
to him: as a big boy he wrote and illustrated a good many, some of
which are printed in _The Coloured Lands_. I have found several