‘Old World’ writings read by Dan Chapman, CONCEPTUALVOICE Clone
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Some American Cities
From the book “What I saw in America”
By Gilbert Keith Chesterton, English author & philosopher
HEAR: Chesterton Radio
Timestamp 1923
THERE is one point, almost to be called a para-
dox, to be noted about New York; and that is
that in one sense it is really new. The term
very seldom has any relevance to the reality. The New
Forest is nearly as old as the Conquest, and the New
Theology is nearly as old as the Creed. Things have
been offered to me as the new thought that might more
properly be called the old thoughtlessness ; and the thing
we call the New Poor Law is already old enough to
know better. But there is a sense in which New York
is always new; in the sense that it is always being re-
newed. A stranger might well say that the chief in-
dustry of the citizens consists of destroying their city;
but he soon realises that they always start it all over
again with undiminished energy and hope. At first I
had a fancy that they never quite finished putting up
a big building without feeling that it was time to pull it
down again; and that somebody began to dig up the first
foundations while somebody else was putting on the last
tiles. This fills the whole of this brilliant and bewilder-
ing place with a quite unique and unparalleled air of rapid
ruin. Ruins spring up so suddenly like mushrooms,
which with us are the growth of age like mosses, that one
half expects to see ivy climbing quickly up the broken
walls as in the nightmare of the Time Machine, or in
some incredibly accelerated cinema.
There is no sight in any country that raises my own
spirits so much as a scaffolding. It is a tragedy that
they always take the scaffolding away, and leave us
nothing but a mere building. If they would only take
the building away and leave us a beautiful scaffolding, it
would in most cases be a gain to the loveliness of earth.
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