I went away."

"I certainly must have been a brute," I replied. "But I have
endeavoured to make a lifetime atone for my early conduct." And
I fell to thinking how even Nina, miracle of diligence and
self-effacement, remembered a new pink frock across the abyss of
the years. . . . Walking with my old friends round the garden, I
found in every earth-plot and tree-root the arenas of an active
and adventurous life in early boyhood. . . .*

[* Unpublished fragment.]

Edward Chesterton was a Liberal politically and what has been called
a Liberal Christian religiously. When the family went to
church--which happened very seldom--it was to listen to the sermons
of Stopford Brooke. Some twenty years later, Cecil was to remark with
amusement that he had as a small boy heard every part of the teaching
now (1908) being set out by R. J. Campbell under the title, "The New
Religion." The Chesterton Liberalism entered into the view of history
given to their children, and it produced from Gilbert the only poem
of his childhood worth quoting. I cannot date it, but the very
immature handwriting and curious spelling mark it as early.

Probably most children have read, or at any rate up to my own
generation, had read, Aytoun's _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, and
played at being Cavaliers as a result. But Gilbert could not play at
being a Cavalier. He had learned from his father to be a Roundhead,
as had every good Liberal of that day. What was to be done about it?
He took the Lays and rewrote them in an excellent imitation of
Aytoun, but on the opposite side. In view of his own later