The Christian Social Union here Was very much annoyed; It seems there is some duty Which we never should avoid, And so they sang a lot of hymns To help the Unemployed.
Upon a platform at the end The speakers were displayed And Bishop Hoskins stood in front And hit a bell and said That Mr. Carter was to pray, And Mr. Carter prayed.
Then Bishop Gore of Birmingham He stood upon one leg And said he would be happier If beggars didn't beg, And that if they pinched his palace It would take him down a peg.
He said that Unemployment Was a horror and a blight, He said that charities produced Servility and spite, And stood upon the other leg And said it wasn't right.
And then a man named Chesterton Got up and played with water, He seemed to say that principles Were nice and led to slaughter And how we always compromised And how we didn't orter.
Then Canon Holland fired ahead Like fifty cannons firing, We tried to find out what he meant With infinite enquiring, But the way he made the windows jump We couldn't help admiring.
I understood him to remark (It seemed a little odd.) That half a dozen of his friends had never been in quod. He said he was a Socialist himself, And so was God.
He said the human soul should be Ashamed of every sham, He said a man should constantly Ejaculate "I am" When he had done, I went outside And got into a tram.
Partly perhaps to console himself for the loss of his son's Daily company, chiefly, I imagine, out of sheer pride and joy in his success, Edward Chesterton started after the publication of _The Wild Knight_ pasting all Gilbert's press-cuttings into volumes. Later I learnt that it had long been Gilbert's weekly penance to read these cuttings on Sunday afternoon at his father's house. Traces of his passage are visible wherever a space admits of a caricature, and occasionally, where it does not, the caricature is superimposed on the text.
His growing fame may be seen by the growing size of these volumes and the increased space given to each of his books. _Twelve Types_ in 1902 had a good press for a young man's work and was taken seriously in some important papers, but its success was as nothing compared with that of the _Browning_ a year later. The bulk of _Twelve Types_, as of _The Defendant_, had appeared in periodicals, but never in his life did Gilbert prepare a volume of his essays for the press without improving, changing and unifying. It was never merely a collection, always a book.