All the words dedicated to places of eating and drinking are pure and poetic words.  Even the word “hotel” is the word hospital.  And St. Julien, whose claret I drank this Christmas, was the patron saint of innkeepers, because (as far as I can make out) he was hospitable to lepers.  Now I do not say that the ordinary hotel-keeper in Piccadilly or the Avenue de l’Opera would embrace a leper, slap him on the back, and ask him to order what he liked; but I do say that hospitality is his trade virtue.  And I do also say it is well to keep before our eyes the supreme adventure of a virtue.  If you are brave, think of the man who was braver than you.  If you are kind, think of the man who was kinder than you.

That is what was meant by having a patron saint.  That is the link between the poor saint who received bodily lepers and the great hotel proprietor who (as a rule) receives spiritual lepers.  But a word yet weaker than “hotel” illustrates the same point—­the word “restaurant.”  There again you have the admission that there is a definite building or statue to “restore”; that ineffaceable image of man that some call the image of God.  And that is the holiday; it is the restaurant or restoring thing that, by a blast of magic, turns a man into himself.

This complete and reconstructed man is the nightmare of the modern capitalist.  His whole scheme would crack across like a mirror of Shallot, if once a plain man were ready for his two plain duties—­ready to live and ready to die.  And that horror of holidays which marks the modern capitalist is very largely a horror of the vision of a whole human being:  something that is not a “hand” or a “head for figutes.”  But an awful creature who has met himself in the wilderness.  The employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.

To anyone who knows any history it is wholly needless to say that holidays have been destroyed.  As Mr. Belloc, who knows much more history than you or I, recently pointed out in the “Pall Mall Magazine,” Shakespeare’s title of “Twelfth Night:  or What You Will” simply meant that a winter carnival for everybody went on wildly till the twelfth night after Christmas.  Those of my readers who work for modern offices or factories might ask their employers for twelve days’ holidays after Christmas.  And they might let me know the reply.

V. THE CHURCH OF THE SERVILE STATE

I confess I cannot see why mere blasphemy by itself should be an excuse for tyranny and treason; or how the mere isolated fact of a man not believing in God should be a reason for my believing in Him.