Plays and novels which picture meetings between fathers and sons parted from birth or before have always seemed singularly unconvincing to us. The old man says "My boy! My boy!" and weeps, and the young man looks him warmly in the eye and says, "There, there." Not a bit like it is our guess. If we had never seen H, 3rd, and had then met him at the end of twenty years, we wouldn't be particularly interested. Strangers always embarrass us. It would not even shock us much to find that they had sent him to Yale or that he brushed his hair straight back or wore spats. There are to us no ties at all just in being a father. A son is distinctly an acquired taste. It's the practice of parenthood that makes you feel that, after all, there may be something in it. And anybody's child will do for practice.
IV
G. K. C.
The ship news man said that Gilbert K. Chesterton was staying at the Commodore and the telephone girl said he wasn't, but we'd trust even a ship news man before a hotel central and so we persisted.
In fact, we almost persuaded her.
"Maybe he's connected with one of the automobile companies that are exhibiting here," she suggested, helpfully. For a moment we wondered if by any chance the hotel authorities had made an error and placed him in the lobby with the ten-ton trucks. It seemed too fantastic.
"He's not with any automobile company," we said severely. "Didn't you ever hear of 'The Man Who Was Thursday'?"
"He may have been here Thursday, but he's not registered now," she answered with some assurance. We didn't seem to be getting on. "It's a book," we shouted. "He wrote it."
"Not in this hotel," said central with an air of finality and rang off before we could try her out on "Man Alive" or "The Ball and the Cross." Still, it turned out eventually that she was right for it was the Biltmore which at last acknowledged Mr. Chesterton somewhat reluctantly after we had spelled out the name.
"Not in his room, but somewhere about the hotel," was the message.
"You can find him," said the city editor with confidence. "Just take this picture with you. He's sort of fat and he speaks with an English accent."