and swayed by a spiritual wind, a sylvan object that I can continue
to contemplate with calm? That policeman who lifts his hand
to warn three omnibuses of the peril that they run in encountering
my person, what is he but a shrub shaken for a moment with that
blast of human law which is a thing stronger than anarchy?
Gradually this impression of the woods wears off. But this
black-and-white contrast between the visible and invisible, this deep
sense that the one essential belief is belief in the invisible as against
the visible, is suddenly and sensationally brought back to my mind.
Exactly at the moment when Fleet Street has grown most familiar (that is,
most bewildering and bright), my eye catches a poster of vivid violet,
on which I see written in large black letters these remarkable words:
"Should Shop Assistants Marry?"

. . . . .

When I saw those words everything might just as well
have turned upside down. The men in Fleet Street might
have been walking about on their hands. The cross of
St. Paul's might have been hanging in the air upside down.
For I realise that I have really come into a topsy-turvy country;
I have come into the country where men do definitely believe
that the waving of the trees makes the wind. That is to say,
they believe that the material circumstances, however black
and twisted, are more important than the spiritual realities,
however powerful and pure. "Should Shop Assistants Marry?" I am
puzzled to think what some periods and schools of human history
would have made of such a question. The ascetics of the East
or of some periods of the early Church would have thought
that the question meant, "Are not shop assistants too saintly,