The Club of Queer Trades

By Chesterton, Gilbert Keith

Book Id: WPLBN0000614061
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size: 0.7 MB
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Title:	The Club of Queer Trades
Author:	Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature & thought, Literature and history, Literature & philosophy
Collections:	Project Gutenberg Consortia Center
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Publisher:	Project Gutenberg Consortia Center


Citation APA MLA Chicago Keith, 1874-193, C. G. (n.d.). The Club of Queer Trades. Retrieved from http://self.gutenberg.org/

Excerpt
The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown Rabelais, or his wild illustrator Gustave Dore, must have had something to do with the designing of the things called flats in England and America. There is something entirely Gargantuan in the idea of economising space by piling houses on top of each other, front doors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim immense hives. The passer-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro Shipping Agency or the London office of the Rutland Sentinel, and passes through the twilight passages as one passes through the twilight corridors of a dream. If the Thugs set up a Strangers? Assassination Company in one of the great buildings in Norfolk Street, and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries, no inquiries would be made. And the Club of Queer Trades reigns in a great edifice hidden like a fossil in a mighty cliff of fossils.