18 - The Flying Inn - GK Chesterton - Classic Science Fiction Books

Loading summary

Transcript7 lines

[00:00]
A
Babe, did you see that? Motocasino is giving a 1,776,000 worth of prizes. That's why they're called America's Social Casino, celebrating the birth of America bigger than anyone else. You can win incredible experiences at NASCAR and F1 races and a grand prize of 1 million sweeps coins. So what are you waiting for? Spin now on Motocasino. Download the Motocasino app today. Moto Casino is a social casino. Prohibit and purchase necessary. Visit Moto Us for more details. Moto Casino America Social Casino when you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-granger click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
[01:31]
B
Chapter 18 the Republic of Peaceways In a hamlet round about Windermere, let us say, or somewhere in Wordsworth's country, there could be found a cottage in which could be found a cottager. So far, all is as it should be, and the visitor would first be conscious of a hearty and even noisy elderly man with an apple face and a short white beard. This person would then loudly proffer to the visitor the opportunity of seeing his father, a somewhat more elderly man with a somewhat longer white beard, but still up and about, and these two together would then initiate the neophyte into the joys of the society of a grandfather who was more than a hundred years old, and still very proud of the fact. This miracle, it seemed, had been worked entirely on milk. The subject of this diet, the oldest of the three men continued to discuss in enormous detail. For the rest, it might be said that his pleasures were purely arithmetical. Some men count their years with dismay, and he counted his with a juvenile vanity. Some Men collect stamps or coins, and he collected days. Newspaper men interviewed him about the historic times through which he had lived without eliciting anything whatever, except that he had apparently taken to an exclusive milk diet at about the age when most of us leave it off. Asked if he was alive in 1815, he said that was the very year he found it wasn't any milk, but must be mountain milk, like Dr. Meadows says. Nor would his calculating creed of life have allowed him to understand you if you had said that. In a meadowland over sea that lies before the city of Brussels, boys of his old school in that year gained the love of the gods and died young. It was the philanthropic Dr. Meadows, of course, who discovered this deathless tribe and erected on it the whole of his great dietetic philosophy, to say nothing of the houses and dairies of Peaceways. He attracted many pupils and backers among the wealthy and influential young men who were, so to speak, training for extreme old age. Infant old men, embryo nonagenarians. It would be an exaggeration to say that they watched joyfully for the first white hair as fascination fledgby watched for his first whisker. But it is quite true to say that they seemed to have scorned the beauty of woman and the feasting of friends and above all, the old idea of death with glory. In comparison with this vision of the sports of second childhood, Peaceways was in its essential plan, much like what we call a garden city, a ring of buildings where the work people did their work with a pretty ornamental town in the center where they lived in the open country outside side. This was no doubt much healthier than the factory system in the great towns and may have partly accounted for the serene expression of Dr. Meadows and his friends. If any part of the credit can be spared from the splendors of mountain milk. The place lay far from the common highways of England, and its inhabitants were enabled to enjoy their quiet skies and level woods almost undisturbed and fully absorb whatever may be valuable in the meadow's method and view. Until one day a small and very dirty motor drove into the middle of their town. It stopped beside one of those triangular islets of grass that are common at forked roads. And two men in goggles, one tall and the other short, got out and stood on the central space of grass as if they were buffoons about to do tricks, as indeed they were. Before entering the town, they had stopped by a splendid mountain stream, quickening and thickening rapidly into a river unhelmed and otherwise eased themselves, eaten a Little bread bought at Whittington and drank the water of the widening current which opened on the valley of Peaceways. I'm beginning quite to like water, said the taller of the two knights. I used to think it a most dangerous drink. In theory, of course. It ought only to be given to people who are fainting. It's really good for them, much better than brandy. Besides, think of wasting good brandy on people who are fainting. But I don't go so far as I did. I shouldn't insist on a doctor's prescription before I allow people water. That was the too severe morality of youth. That was my innocence and goodness. I thought that if I fell once, water drinking might become a habit. But I do see the good side of water now, how good it is when you're really thirsty, how it glitters and gurgles, how alive it is. After all, it's the best of drinks after the other. As it says in the song, Feast on wine or fast on water, and your honor shall stand sure. God Almighty's son and daughter, he the valiant, she the pure. If an angel out of heaven brings you other things to drink, thank him for his kind intentions. Go and and pour them down the sink. Tea is like the east he grows in, a great yellow mandarin with urbanity of manner and unconsciousness of sin. All the women, like a harem at his pigtail, troop along. And like all the east he grows in, he is poison when he's strong. Tea, although an oriental is a gentleman, at least. Cocoa is a cad and coward. Cocoa is a vulgar beast. Cocoa is a dull, disloyal, lying, crawling cad and clown, and may very well be grateful to the fool that takes him down. As for all the windy waters, they were rained like trumpets down when good drink had been dishonored by the tipplers of the town. When red wine had brought red ruin and the death dance of our times, Heaven sent us soda water as a torment for our crimes. Upon my soul. This water tastes quite nice. I wonder what vintage now. And he smacked his lips with solemnity. It tastes just like the year 1881 tasted. You can fancy anything in the tasting way, returned his shorter companion. Mr. Jack, who was always up to his tricks, did serve plain water in those little glasses they drink liqueurs out of. And everyone swore it was a delicious liqueur and wanted to know where they could get it all except old Admiral Guffin, who said it tasted too strong of olives. But water's much the best for our game, certainly. Patrick nodded and then said I doubt if I could do it if it weren't for the comfort of looking at that. And he kicked the rum keg and feeling we shall have a good swig at it some day. It feels like a fairy tale, carrying that about as if rum were a pirate's treasure, as if it were molten gold. Besides, we can have such fun with it. Other people. What was that joke I thought of this morning? Oh, I remember. Where's that milk can of mine? For the next 20 minutes he was industriously occupied with his milk can and the cask pump watching him with an interest amounting to anxiety. Lifting his head, however, at the end of that time, he knotted his red brows and said, what's that? What's what? Asked the other traveler. That said Captain Patrick Dalroy, and pointed to a figure approaching on the road parallel to the river.
[09:54]
A
Moto Casino America Social Casino welcome to Moto Casino, where the excitement never ends. With thousands of the hottest free to play social casino games. Fastest payouts and the best promotions in the industry. No tricks or gimmicks. Owned and operated in the USA Moto Casino is a free to play social casino. No purchase necessary. 21 plus to play void. We're prohibited. Sign up today for a generous welcome bonus. Moto Casino America Social Casino Download the Moto Casino app today.
[10:24]
B
I mean, what's it for? The figure had a longish beard and very long hair falling far below its shoulders. It had a serious and steadfast expression. It was dressed in what the inexperienced Mr. Pump at first took to be its nightgown, but afterward learned it to be its complete goat's hair tunic, unmixed even with a thread of the destructive and deadly wool of the sheep. It had no boots on its feet. It walked very swiftly to a particular turn of the stream and then turned very sharply, since it had accomplished its constitutional and walked back toward the perfect town of Peaceways. I suppose it's somebody from that milk place, said Humphrey Pump indulgently. They seem to be pretty mad. I don't mind that so much, said Delroy. I'm mad myself sometimes. But a madman has only one merit and last link with God. A madman is always logical. Now, what is the logical connection between living on milk and wearing your hair long? Most of us lived on milk when we had no hair at all. How do they connect it up? Are there any heads even for a synopsis? Is it, say, milk, water shaving water shaving hair? Is it milk, kindness, unkindness, convicts hair? What is the logical connection between having too much hair and having far too few boots. What can it be? Is it hair? Hair Trunk leather Trunk leather boots? Is it hair? Beard? Oysters? Seaside paddling? No boots. Man is liable to err, especially when every mistake he makes is called a movement. But why should all the lunacies live together? Because all the lunatics should live together, said Humphrey. And if you'd seen what happened up at Crampton with the farming out idea, you'd know. It's all very well, Captain, but if people can prevent a guest of great importance being buried up to the neck in farm manure, they will, they will. Really. He coughed almost apologetically. He was about to attempt a resumption of the conversation when he saw his companion slap the milk can and keg back into the car and get into it himself. You drive, he said. Drive me? Where those things live, you know, Hump. They did not, however, arrive in the civic center of such things without yet another delay. They left the river and followed the man with the long hair and the goatskin frock, and he stopped, as it happened, at a house on the outskirts of the village. The adventurers stopped also, out of curiosity, and were at first relieved to see the man almost instantly reappear, having transacted his business with a quickness that seemed incredible. A second glance showed them it was not the man, but another man dressed exactly like him. A few minutes more of inquisitive delay showed them many of the kilty and goatish sect going in and out of this particular place, each clad in his innocent uniform. This must be the temple and chapel, muttered Patrick. It must be here they sacrifice a glass of milk to a cow, or whatever it is they do. Well, the joke is pretty obvious, but we must wait for a lull in the crowding of the congregation. When the last long haired phantom had faded up the road, Delroy sprang from the car and drove the sign board deep into the earth with savage violence and and then very quietly knocked at the door. The apparent owner of the place, of whom the two last of the long haired and barefooted idealists were taking a rather hurried farewell, was a man curiously ill fitted for the part he seemed cast for in the only possible plot. Both Pump and Delroy thought they had never seen a man look so sullen. His face was of the rubicund sort that does not suggest jollity, but merely a stagnant indigestion in the head. His mustache hung heavy and dark, his brows yet heavier and darker. Dalroy had seen something of the sort on the faces of defeated people disgracefully forced into submission. But he could not make head or tail of it in connection with the priggish perfections of Pieceways. It was all the odder because he was manifestly prosperous, his clothes were smartly cut in something of the sporting manner, and the inside of his house was at least four times grander than the outside. But what mystified the most was this, that he did not so much exhibit the natural curiosity of a gentleman whose private house is entered by strangers, but rather an embarrassed and restless expectation. During Delroy's eager apologies and courteous inquiries about the direction and accommodations of Peaceways, his eye, which was of the boiled gooseberry order, perpetually wandered from them to the cupboard and then again to the window, and at last he got up and went to look out into the road. Oh, yes, sir, very healthy place. Pieceways, he said, peering through the lattice. Very dash it. What do they mean, a very healthy place? Of course they have their little ways only drink pure milk, don't they? Asked Dalroy. The householder looked at him with a rather wild eye and grunted, yes, so they say, and he went again to the window. I've bought some of it, said Patrick, patting his pet milk can, which he carried under his arm as if unable to be separated from Dr. Meadows discovery. Have a glass of milk, sir. The man's boiled eye began to bulge in anger or some other emotion. What do you want? He muttered. Are you text or what? Agents and distributors of the Meadows Mountain Milk, said the captain with simple pride. Taste it. The dazed householder took a glass of the blameless liquid and sipped it, and the change on his face was extraordinary. Well, I'm jiggered, he said with a broad and rather coarse grin. That's a queer dodge you're in the joke. I see. Then he went again restlessly to the window and added, but if we're all friends, why the blazes don't the others come in? I've never known trade so slow before. Who are the others? Asked Mr. Pump. Oh, the usual pieceways people, said the other. They generally come here before work. Dr. Meadows don't work them for very long hours. That wouldn't be healthy, or whatever he calls it. But he's particular about their being punctual. I've seen them running with all their pure minded togs on when the hooter gave the last call. Then he abruptly opened the front door and called out impatiently, but not loudly, come along in if you're coming. You'll give the show away if you play the fool out there, Patrick looked out also, and the view of the road outside was certainly rather singular. He was used to crowds, large and small, collecting outside houses which he had honored with the sign of the old ship, but they generally stared up at it in unaffected wonder and amusement. But outside this open door some 20 or 30 persons in what Pump had called their nightgowns were moving to and fro like somnambulists, apparently blind to the presence of the sign, looking at the other side of the road, looking at the horizon, looking at the clouds of morning, and only occasionally stopping to whisper to each other. But when the owner of the house called to one of these ostentatiously abstracted beings and asked him hoarsely what the devil was the matter, it was natural for the milk fed one to turn his feeble eye toward the sign. The gooseberry eyes followed his, and the face to which they belonged was a study in apoplectic astonishment. What the hell have you done to my house? He demanded. Of course they can't come in if this thing's here. I'll take it down if you like, said Delroy, stepping out and picking it up like a flower from the front garden, to the amazement of the men in the road who thought they had strayed into a nursery fairy tale. But I wish in return you'd give me some idea of what the blaze is all this means. Wait till I've served these men, replied his host. The goat garbed persons went very sheepishly or goatishly into the now signless building, and were rapidly served with raw spirits, which Mr. Pump suspected to be of no very superior quality. When the last goat was gone, Captain Delroy said, I mean that all this seems to me topsy turvy. I understood that as the law stands now, if there's a sign they are allowed to drink, and if there isn't, they aren't. The law, said the man in a voice thick with scorn. Do you think these poor brutes are afraid of the law as they are of the doctor? Why should they be afraid of the doctor? Asked Delroy innocently. I always heard that Peaceways was a self governing republic. Self governing be damned, was the illiberal reply. Don't he own all the houses and could turn them out in a snowstorm? Don't he pay all the wages and could start stiff in a month? The law. And he snorted a moment after he squared his elbows on the table and began to explain more fully. I was a brewer about here and had the biggest brewery in these parts. There were only two houses which didn't belong to me. And the magistrates took away their licenses after a time. Ten years ago you could see Hugby's ales written beside every sign in the county. Then came these cursed radicals and our leader Lord Ivywood must go over to their side about it and let this doctor buy all the land under some new law that there shan't be any pubs at all. And so my business is ruined so that he can sell his milk. Luckily I'd done pretty well before and had some compensation, of course, and I still do a fair trade on the Q. T as you see. But of course that don't amount to half the old one, for they're afraid of old meadows finding out. Snuffling old blighter. And the gentleman with the good clothes spat on the carpet. I am a radical myself, said the Irishman, rather coldly. For all information on the Conservative Party, I must refer you to my friend Mr. Pump, who is of course in the inmost secrets of his leaders, but it seems to me very rum sort of radicalism. To eat and drink at the orders of a master who is a madman merely because he's also a millionaire. O liberty. What very complicated and even unsatisfactory social developments are committed in thy name. Why don't they kick the old ass round the town a bit? No boots. Is that why they're allowed no boots? Oh, roll em downhill in a milk can. He can't object to that. I don't know, said Pump in his ruminant way. Master Christian's aunt did. But ladies are more particular, of course. Look here. Cried Delroy in some excitement. If I stick up that sign outside and stay here to help, will you defy them? You'd be strictly within the law and any private coercion. I can promise you they shall repent, plant the sign and sell the stuff openly like a man. And you may stand in English history like a deliverer. Mr. Hugby of Hugby's Ales only looked gloomily at the table. His was not the sort of drinking, nor the sort of drink selling on which the revolutionary sentiment flourishes. Well, said the Captain, will you come with me and say hear, hear. And how true. What matchless eloquence if I make a speech in the market place. Come along, there's room in our car. Well, I'll come with you if you like, replied Mr. Hugby heavily. It's true, if yours is allowed, we might get our trade back too. And putting on a silk hat, he followed the captain and the innkeeper out to their little Car. The model village was not an appropriate background for Mr. Hugby's silk hat. Indeed, the hat seemed somehow to bring out, by contrast, all that was fantastic in the place. It was a superb morning, some hours after sunrise. The edges of the sky touching the ring of dim woods and distant hills, were still jeweled with the tiny transparent clouds of daybre, delicate red and green or yellow, but above the vault of heaven rose through turquoise into a torrid and solid blue in which the other clouds, the colossal cumuli, tumbled about like a celestial pillow fight. The bulk of the houses were as white as the clouds, so that it looked, to use another simile, as if some of the whitewashed cottages were flying and falling about the sky. But most of the white houses were picked out here and there with bright colors. Here an ornament in orange, or there a stripe of lemon yellow, as if by the brush of a baby giant. The houses had no thatching. Thatching is not hygienic, but were mostly covered with a sort of peacock green tiles, bought cheap at a pre Raphaelite bazaar, or less frequently by some still more esoteric sort of terracotta bricks. The houses were not English, nor homelike, nor suited to the landscape, for the houses had not been built by free men for themselves, but at the fancy of a whimsical lord, but considered as a sort of elfin city in a pantomime. It was a really picturesque background for pantomimic proceedings. I fear Mr. Delroy's proceedings from the first rather deserved that name to begin with. He left the sign, the cask and the keg all wrapped and concealed in the car, but removed all the wraps of his own disguise and stood on the central patch of grass in that green uniform that looked all the more insolent for being as ragged as the grass, even that was less ragged than his red hair, which no red jungle of the east could imitate. Then he took out, almost tenderly, the large milk can and deposited it almost reverently on the island of turf. Then he stood beside it like Napoleon beside a gun, with an expression of tremendous seriousness and even severity. Then he drew his sword, and with that flashing weapon as with a flail, lashed and thrashed the echoing metal can till the din was deafening, and Mr. Hugby hastily got out of the car and withdrew to a slight distance, stopping his ears. Mr. Pump sat solidly at the steering wheel well, knowing it might be necessary to start in some haste. Gather. Gather. Gather. Pieceways. Shouted Patrick, still banging on the can and lamenting the difficulties of adapting McGregor's gathering to the name and occasion where landless, landless, landless pieceways. Two or three of the goat clad, recognizing Mr. Hugby with a guilty look, drew near with great caution, and the captain shouted at them as if they were an army covering Salisbury Plain. Citizens. He roared, saying anything that came into his head. Try the only original unadulterated mountain milk for which alone Mahomet came to the mountain, the original milk of the land flowing with milk and honey, the high quality of which could alone have popularized so unappetizing a combination. Try our milk. None others are genuine who can do without milk. Even whales can't do without milk. If any lady or gentleman keeps a favorite whale at home, now's their chance. The early whale catches the milk. Just look at our milk. If you say you can't look at the milk because it's in the can, well, look at the can. You must look at the can. You simply must. When duty whispers, lo, thou must. He bellowed at the top of his voice in a highly impromptu peroration. When duty whispers, lo, thou must, the youth replies, I can. And with the word can, he hit the can with a shocking and shattering noise like a peal of demoniac bells of steel. This introductory speech is open to criticism from those who regard it as intended for the study rather than the stage. The present chronicler, who has no aim save truth, is bound to record that for its own unscrupulous purpose it was extremely successful, a great mass of the citizens of Peaceways having been attracted by the noise of one man shouting like a crowd. There are crowds who do not care to revolt, but there are no crowds who do not like someone else to do it for them, a fact which the safest oligarchs may be wise to learn. But Delroy's ultimate triumph, I regret to say, consisted in actually handing to a few of the foremost of his audience some samples of his blameless beverage. The fact was certainly striking. Some were paralyzed with surprise. Some were abruptly broken double with laughter. Many chuckled, some cheered. All looked radiantly toward the eccentric orator. And yet the radiance died quietly and suddenly from their faces, and only because one little old man had joined the group. A little old man in white linen with a white pointed beard and a white powder puff of hair like thistledown, a man whom almost every man present could have killed with the left arm. End of chapter 18. You ain't heard about Moto Casino. Moto has real Vegas slots.
[28:51]
A
Any game you can find on the floor in Vegas, you can play it on Moto.
[28:53]
B
I like my slots hot Moto Free to play like food stamps in line at the grocery store At a funeral in traffic Keep your eyes on the road Hop on Moto Casino. Moto Casino Got jackpots that are bigger than my belly Moto America's hottest Free
[29:06]
A
to play Social casino Download the Moto Casino app today. Moto Casino is a social casino board. We're prohibited in the purchase necessary. Visit Moto Us for more details. America Social Casino.

Summary5 min read

Classic Science Fiction Books Podcast
Episode 18: The Flying Inn - GK Chesterton, Chapter 18 "The Republic of Peaceways"
Host: solgoodmedia.com
Release Date: January 9, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode features a complete audiobook reading of Chapter 18 from GK Chesterton’s satirical science fiction novel, The Flying Inn. The chapter, titled "The Republic of Peaceways," explores a utopian British village designed around extreme health philosophies, the social consequences of idealistic communities, and the clash between individual eccentricity and institutional control. Through a blend of biting humor and wry observation, Chesterton questions conformity, authority, true freedom, and radicalism in the pursuit of societal progress.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Setting: Peaceways - A "Healthy" Utopia

The chapter opens in a rural hamlet modeled as a "garden city," with a focus on longevity and purity, thanks to "the meadow’s method" centered on an exclusive milk diet.
Notable Character Introduction: An elderly family, where the grandfather attributes survival past a hundred to "mountain milk," establishing the chapter’s running motif (01:30).
Peaceways is described as "serene," isolated, and governed by the health-obsessed, philanthropic Dr. Meadows, attracting wealthy backers intent on living forever.

Satirical Examination of Faddism and Conformity

The residents of Peaceways are portrayed as comically zealous, “training for extreme old age”—abandoning pleasure, beauty, and even death with glory in favor of "second childhood."
Detailed descriptions of the town’s architecture reinforce the sense of imposed, unrooted design: “The houses had not been built by free men for themselves, but at the fancy of a whimsical lord” (22:50).

The Interlopers: Captain Patrick Dalroy & Mr. Pump Arrive

Dalroy and Pump, the protagonists, arrive in town by car, rum barrel in tow, and humorously debate the merits of water, milk, and other beverages.
Memorable Quote:
Dalroy: "I'm beginning quite to like water...after all it's the best of drinks after the other. As it says in the song, Feast on wine or fast on water and your honour shall stand sure..." (07:00)
Dalroy delivers a satirical verse extolling water and mocking tea and cocoa, poking fun at English drinking habits and fads (07:10–08:20).

Encounter with the Goat-Clad Inhabitants

Upon entering Peaceways, Dalroy and Pump see long-haired, barefoot men in goat’s hair tunics—a caricature of health ideals taken to absurdity.
Dalroy questions the logic:
Dalroy: "Now, what is the logical connection between living on milk and wearing your hair long?...Is it hair, hair trunk leather, trunk leather boots? ...Man is liable to err, especially when every mistake he makes is called a movement..." (12:00)
The humor escalates with descriptions of clandestine drinking and fear of Dr. Meadows’ disapproval, exposing the town’s repressive conformity.

Underground Resistance: Sly Subversion of Utopian Rules

Dalroy and Pump visit a local house masked as a private establishment, where the proprietor (Mr. Hugby) serves spirits in secret.
Hugby, a ruined brewer, resents the town’s radical laws and Dr. Meadows’ authority. He reveals the underlying coercion and hypocrisy: Hugby: "Self-governing be damned...Don’t he own all the houses...Don’t he pay all the wages...?" (17:04)
Dalroy proposes defiance: Dalroy: "Plant the sign and sell the stuff openly like a man. And you may stand in English history like a deliverer." (20:14)

Comic Public Rebellion

Dalroy orchestrates a theatrical protest, banging on a milk can in the town square and delivering a bombastic pseudo-sales pitch: Dalroy: "Try our milk. None others are genuine. Who can do without milk? Even whales can't do without milk...When duty whispers, lo, thou must, the youth replies, I can!" (24:55)
The spectacle draws out the goat-clad villagers and cuts through the town’s staid atmosphere, blending farce with pointed social commentary.

The Authority Figure Appears

The comedic unrest is abruptly quelled by the appearance of Dr. Meadows himself—a frail, white-clad old man whose presence silences the crowd (28:30).
The very real, if quietly exercised, power of the town’s authority is starkly illustrated and left unresolved as the chapter ends.

Memorable Quotes & Moments

On Water’s Virtue:
Dalroy: "Upon my soul. This water tastes quite nice. I wonder what vintage now. And he smacked his lips with solemnity. It tastes just like the year 1881 tasted." (07:55)
Satirical Song, Mocking Drinking Fads:
Dalroy: “Tea is like the east he grows in, a great yellow mandarin...Tea...is poison when he's strong. Cocoa is a cad and coward. Cocoa is a vulgar beast...” (08:00)
On Logic and Utopian Faddism:
Dalroy: "A madman is always logical. Now what is the logical connection between living on milk and wearing your hair long?...Man is liable to err, especially when every mistake he makes is called a movement." (12:06)
Revealing the Nature of ‘Republic’:
Hugby: "Self-governing be damned, don’t he own all the houses and could turn them out in a snowstorm? Don’t he pay all the wages and could start stiff in a month?...The law." (17:00)
Rallying the Villagers:
Dalroy (public protest): “When duty whispers, lo, thou must, the youth replies, I can!” (25:20)

Timestamps for Important Segments

[01:30] — Opening: Introduction to Peaceways and the "immortal" milk diet
[07:00–08:20] — Dalroy’s comedic song/analysis of beverage culture
[12:00–13:00] — Satire on logic and social movements
[17:00–21:00] — The hidden tensions in Peaceways & Hugby’s exposé
[24:50–26:00] — Dalroy’s pseudo-rebellion in the village square
[28:30] — Dr. Meadows' silent but powerful arrival

Style and Tone

Chesterton’s narrative voice blends sharp satire with a playful, absurdist tone. The dialogue, especially Dalroy’s, is punctuated by verbosity, irony, and poetic riffing, lampooning both the earnestness and the pretensions of the utopian project.

Conclusion

Chapter 18 of The Flying Inn lampoons the absurdities of imposed utopias, the dangers of moral faddism, and the ironies of “self-government” shadowed by unaccountable power. Through comic set pieces and witty dialogue, Chesterton challenges listeners to see the humor—and the warning—in attempts to engineer perfection.

Listeners are left with a vivid sense of Chesterton’s skepticism towards social experiments that forget the messy reality of human nature, even as his characters defy the rules with laughter, subversion, and a healthy dose of mischief.

Loading summary

Transcript7 lines

[00:00]
A
Babe, did you see that? Motocasino is giving a 1,776,000 worth of prizes. That's why they're called America's Social Casino, celebrating the birth of America bigger than anyone else. You can win incredible experiences at NASCAR and F1 races and a grand prize of 1 million sweeps coins. So what are you waiting for? Spin now on Motocasino. Download the Motocasino app today. Moto Casino is a social casino. Prohibit and purchase necessary. Visit Moto Us for more details. Moto Casino America Social Casino when you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-granger click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
[01:31]
B
Chapter 18 the Republic of Peaceways In a hamlet round about Windermere, let us say, or somewhere in Wordsworth's country, there could be found a cottage in which could be found a cottager. So far, all is as it should be, and the visitor would first be conscious of a hearty and even noisy elderly man with an apple face and a short white beard. This person would then loudly proffer to the visitor the opportunity of seeing his father, a somewhat more elderly man with a somewhat longer white beard, but still up and about, and these two together would then initiate the neophyte into the joys of the society of a grandfather who was more than a hundred years old, and still very proud of the fact. This miracle, it seemed, had been worked entirely on milk. The subject of this diet, the oldest of the three men continued to discuss in enormous detail. For the rest, it might be said that his pleasures were purely arithmetical. Some men count their years with dismay, and he counted his with a juvenile vanity. Some Men collect stamps or coins, and he collected days. Newspaper men interviewed him about the historic times through which he had lived without eliciting anything whatever, except that he had apparently taken to an exclusive milk diet at about the age when most of us leave it off. Asked if he was alive in 1815, he said that was the very year he found it wasn't any milk, but must be mountain milk, like Dr. Meadows says. Nor would his calculating creed of life have allowed him to understand you if you had said that. In a meadowland over sea that lies before the city of Brussels, boys of his old school in that year gained the love of the gods and died young. It was the philanthropic Dr. Meadows, of course, who discovered this deathless tribe and erected on it the whole of his great dietetic philosophy, to say nothing of the houses and dairies of Peaceways. He attracted many pupils and backers among the wealthy and influential young men who were, so to speak, training for extreme old age. Infant old men, embryo nonagenarians. It would be an exaggeration to say that they watched joyfully for the first white hair as fascination fledgby watched for his first whisker. But it is quite true to say that they seemed to have scorned the beauty of woman and the feasting of friends and above all, the old idea of death with glory. In comparison with this vision of the sports of second childhood, Peaceways was in its essential plan, much like what we call a garden city, a ring of buildings where the work people did their work with a pretty ornamental town in the center where they lived in the open country outside side. This was no doubt much healthier than the factory system in the great towns and may have partly accounted for the serene expression of Dr. Meadows and his friends. If any part of the credit can be spared from the splendors of mountain milk. The place lay far from the common highways of England, and its inhabitants were enabled to enjoy their quiet skies and level woods almost undisturbed and fully absorb whatever may be valuable in the meadow's method and view. Until one day a small and very dirty motor drove into the middle of their town. It stopped beside one of those triangular islets of grass that are common at forked roads. And two men in goggles, one tall and the other short, got out and stood on the central space of grass as if they were buffoons about to do tricks, as indeed they were. Before entering the town, they had stopped by a splendid mountain stream, quickening and thickening rapidly into a river unhelmed and otherwise eased themselves, eaten a Little bread bought at Whittington and drank the water of the widening current which opened on the valley of Peaceways. I'm beginning quite to like water, said the taller of the two knights. I used to think it a most dangerous drink. In theory, of course. It ought only to be given to people who are fainting. It's really good for them, much better than brandy. Besides, think of wasting good brandy on people who are fainting. But I don't go so far as I did. I shouldn't insist on a doctor's prescription before I allow people water. That was the too severe morality of youth. That was my innocence and goodness. I thought that if I fell once, water drinking might become a habit. But I do see the good side of water now, how good it is when you're really thirsty, how it glitters and gurgles, how alive it is. After all, it's the best of drinks after the other. As it says in the song, Feast on wine or fast on water, and your honor shall stand sure. God Almighty's son and daughter, he the valiant, she the pure. If an angel out of heaven brings you other things to drink, thank him for his kind intentions. Go and and pour them down the sink. Tea is like the east he grows in, a great yellow mandarin with urbanity of manner and unconsciousness of sin. All the women, like a harem at his pigtail, troop along. And like all the east he grows in, he is poison when he's strong. Tea, although an oriental is a gentleman, at least. Cocoa is a cad and coward. Cocoa is a vulgar beast. Cocoa is a dull, disloyal, lying, crawling cad and clown, and may very well be grateful to the fool that takes him down. As for all the windy waters, they were rained like trumpets down when good drink had been dishonored by the tipplers of the town. When red wine had brought red ruin and the death dance of our times, Heaven sent us soda water as a torment for our crimes. Upon my soul. This water tastes quite nice. I wonder what vintage now. And he smacked his lips with solemnity. It tastes just like the year 1881 tasted. You can fancy anything in the tasting way, returned his shorter companion. Mr. Jack, who was always up to his tricks, did serve plain water in those little glasses they drink liqueurs out of. And everyone swore it was a delicious liqueur and wanted to know where they could get it all except old Admiral Guffin, who said it tasted too strong of olives. But water's much the best for our game, certainly. Patrick nodded and then said I doubt if I could do it if it weren't for the comfort of looking at that. And he kicked the rum keg and feeling we shall have a good swig at it some day. It feels like a fairy tale, carrying that about as if rum were a pirate's treasure, as if it were molten gold. Besides, we can have such fun with it. Other people. What was that joke I thought of this morning? Oh, I remember. Where's that milk can of mine? For the next 20 minutes he was industriously occupied with his milk can and the cask pump watching him with an interest amounting to anxiety. Lifting his head, however, at the end of that time, he knotted his red brows and said, what's that? What's what? Asked the other traveler. That said Captain Patrick Dalroy, and pointed to a figure approaching on the road parallel to the river.
[09:54]
A
Moto Casino America Social Casino welcome to Moto Casino, where the excitement never ends. With thousands of the hottest free to play social casino games. Fastest payouts and the best promotions in the industry. No tricks or gimmicks. Owned and operated in the USA Moto Casino is a free to play social casino. No purchase necessary. 21 plus to play void. We're prohibited. Sign up today for a generous welcome bonus. Moto Casino America Social Casino Download the Moto Casino app today.
[10:24]
B
I mean, what's it for? The figure had a longish beard and very long hair falling far below its shoulders. It had a serious and steadfast expression. It was dressed in what the inexperienced Mr. Pump at first took to be its nightgown, but afterward learned it to be its complete goat's hair tunic, unmixed even with a thread of the destructive and deadly wool of the sheep. It had no boots on its feet. It walked very swiftly to a particular turn of the stream and then turned very sharply, since it had accomplished its constitutional and walked back toward the perfect town of Peaceways. I suppose it's somebody from that milk place, said Humphrey Pump indulgently. They seem to be pretty mad. I don't mind that so much, said Delroy. I'm mad myself sometimes. But a madman has only one merit and last link with God. A madman is always logical. Now, what is the logical connection between living on milk and wearing your hair long? Most of us lived on milk when we had no hair at all. How do they connect it up? Are there any heads even for a synopsis? Is it, say, milk, water shaving water shaving hair? Is it milk, kindness, unkindness, convicts hair? What is the logical connection between having too much hair and having far too few boots. What can it be? Is it hair? Hair Trunk leather Trunk leather boots? Is it hair? Beard? Oysters? Seaside paddling? No boots. Man is liable to err, especially when every mistake he makes is called a movement. But why should all the lunacies live together? Because all the lunatics should live together, said Humphrey. And if you'd seen what happened up at Crampton with the farming out idea, you'd know. It's all very well, Captain, but if people can prevent a guest of great importance being buried up to the neck in farm manure, they will, they will. Really. He coughed almost apologetically. He was about to attempt a resumption of the conversation when he saw his companion slap the milk can and keg back into the car and get into it himself. You drive, he said. Drive me? Where those things live, you know, Hump. They did not, however, arrive in the civic center of such things without yet another delay. They left the river and followed the man with the long hair and the goatskin frock, and he stopped, as it happened, at a house on the outskirts of the village. The adventurers stopped also, out of curiosity, and were at first relieved to see the man almost instantly reappear, having transacted his business with a quickness that seemed incredible. A second glance showed them it was not the man, but another man dressed exactly like him. A few minutes more of inquisitive delay showed them many of the kilty and goatish sect going in and out of this particular place, each clad in his innocent uniform. This must be the temple and chapel, muttered Patrick. It must be here they sacrifice a glass of milk to a cow, or whatever it is they do. Well, the joke is pretty obvious, but we must wait for a lull in the crowding of the congregation. When the last long haired phantom had faded up the road, Delroy sprang from the car and drove the sign board deep into the earth with savage violence and and then very quietly knocked at the door. The apparent owner of the place, of whom the two last of the long haired and barefooted idealists were taking a rather hurried farewell, was a man curiously ill fitted for the part he seemed cast for in the only possible plot. Both Pump and Delroy thought they had never seen a man look so sullen. His face was of the rubicund sort that does not suggest jollity, but merely a stagnant indigestion in the head. His mustache hung heavy and dark, his brows yet heavier and darker. Dalroy had seen something of the sort on the faces of defeated people disgracefully forced into submission. But he could not make head or tail of it in connection with the priggish perfections of Pieceways. It was all the odder because he was manifestly prosperous, his clothes were smartly cut in something of the sporting manner, and the inside of his house was at least four times grander than the outside. But what mystified the most was this, that he did not so much exhibit the natural curiosity of a gentleman whose private house is entered by strangers, but rather an embarrassed and restless expectation. During Delroy's eager apologies and courteous inquiries about the direction and accommodations of Peaceways, his eye, which was of the boiled gooseberry order, perpetually wandered from them to the cupboard and then again to the window, and at last he got up and went to look out into the road. Oh, yes, sir, very healthy place. Pieceways, he said, peering through the lattice. Very dash it. What do they mean, a very healthy place? Of course they have their little ways only drink pure milk, don't they? Asked Dalroy. The householder looked at him with a rather wild eye and grunted, yes, so they say, and he went again to the window. I've bought some of it, said Patrick, patting his pet milk can, which he carried under his arm as if unable to be separated from Dr. Meadows discovery. Have a glass of milk, sir. The man's boiled eye began to bulge in anger or some other emotion. What do you want? He muttered. Are you text or what? Agents and distributors of the Meadows Mountain Milk, said the captain with simple pride. Taste it. The dazed householder took a glass of the blameless liquid and sipped it, and the change on his face was extraordinary. Well, I'm jiggered, he said with a broad and rather coarse grin. That's a queer dodge you're in the joke. I see. Then he went again restlessly to the window and added, but if we're all friends, why the blazes don't the others come in? I've never known trade so slow before. Who are the others? Asked Mr. Pump. Oh, the usual pieceways people, said the other. They generally come here before work. Dr. Meadows don't work them for very long hours. That wouldn't be healthy, or whatever he calls it. But he's particular about their being punctual. I've seen them running with all their pure minded togs on when the hooter gave the last call. Then he abruptly opened the front door and called out impatiently, but not loudly, come along in if you're coming. You'll give the show away if you play the fool out there, Patrick looked out also, and the view of the road outside was certainly rather singular. He was used to crowds, large and small, collecting outside houses which he had honored with the sign of the old ship, but they generally stared up at it in unaffected wonder and amusement. But outside this open door some 20 or 30 persons in what Pump had called their nightgowns were moving to and fro like somnambulists, apparently blind to the presence of the sign, looking at the other side of the road, looking at the horizon, looking at the clouds of morning, and only occasionally stopping to whisper to each other. But when the owner of the house called to one of these ostentatiously abstracted beings and asked him hoarsely what the devil was the matter, it was natural for the milk fed one to turn his feeble eye toward the sign. The gooseberry eyes followed his, and the face to which they belonged was a study in apoplectic astonishment. What the hell have you done to my house? He demanded. Of course they can't come in if this thing's here. I'll take it down if you like, said Delroy, stepping out and picking it up like a flower from the front garden, to the amazement of the men in the road who thought they had strayed into a nursery fairy tale. But I wish in return you'd give me some idea of what the blaze is all this means. Wait till I've served these men, replied his host. The goat garbed persons went very sheepishly or goatishly into the now signless building, and were rapidly served with raw spirits, which Mr. Pump suspected to be of no very superior quality. When the last goat was gone, Captain Delroy said, I mean that all this seems to me topsy turvy. I understood that as the law stands now, if there's a sign they are allowed to drink, and if there isn't, they aren't. The law, said the man in a voice thick with scorn. Do you think these poor brutes are afraid of the law as they are of the doctor? Why should they be afraid of the doctor? Asked Delroy innocently. I always heard that Peaceways was a self governing republic. Self governing be damned, was the illiberal reply. Don't he own all the houses and could turn them out in a snowstorm? Don't he pay all the wages and could start stiff in a month? The law. And he snorted a moment after he squared his elbows on the table and began to explain more fully. I was a brewer about here and had the biggest brewery in these parts. There were only two houses which didn't belong to me. And the magistrates took away their licenses after a time. Ten years ago you could see Hugby's ales written beside every sign in the county. Then came these cursed radicals and our leader Lord Ivywood must go over to their side about it and let this doctor buy all the land under some new law that there shan't be any pubs at all. And so my business is ruined so that he can sell his milk. Luckily I'd done pretty well before and had some compensation, of course, and I still do a fair trade on the Q. T as you see. But of course that don't amount to half the old one, for they're afraid of old meadows finding out. Snuffling old blighter. And the gentleman with the good clothes spat on the carpet. I am a radical myself, said the Irishman, rather coldly. For all information on the Conservative Party, I must refer you to my friend Mr. Pump, who is of course in the inmost secrets of his leaders, but it seems to me very rum sort of radicalism. To eat and drink at the orders of a master who is a madman merely because he's also a millionaire. O liberty. What very complicated and even unsatisfactory social developments are committed in thy name. Why don't they kick the old ass round the town a bit? No boots. Is that why they're allowed no boots? Oh, roll em downhill in a milk can. He can't object to that. I don't know, said Pump in his ruminant way. Master Christian's aunt did. But ladies are more particular, of course. Look here. Cried Delroy in some excitement. If I stick up that sign outside and stay here to help, will you defy them? You'd be strictly within the law and any private coercion. I can promise you they shall repent, plant the sign and sell the stuff openly like a man. And you may stand in English history like a deliverer. Mr. Hugby of Hugby's Ales only looked gloomily at the table. His was not the sort of drinking, nor the sort of drink selling on which the revolutionary sentiment flourishes. Well, said the Captain, will you come with me and say hear, hear. And how true. What matchless eloquence if I make a speech in the market place. Come along, there's room in our car. Well, I'll come with you if you like, replied Mr. Hugby heavily. It's true, if yours is allowed, we might get our trade back too. And putting on a silk hat, he followed the captain and the innkeeper out to their little Car. The model village was not an appropriate background for Mr. Hugby's silk hat. Indeed, the hat seemed somehow to bring out, by contrast, all that was fantastic in the place. It was a superb morning, some hours after sunrise. The edges of the sky touching the ring of dim woods and distant hills, were still jeweled with the tiny transparent clouds of daybre, delicate red and green or yellow, but above the vault of heaven rose through turquoise into a torrid and solid blue in which the other clouds, the colossal cumuli, tumbled about like a celestial pillow fight. The bulk of the houses were as white as the clouds, so that it looked, to use another simile, as if some of the whitewashed cottages were flying and falling about the sky. But most of the white houses were picked out here and there with bright colors. Here an ornament in orange, or there a stripe of lemon yellow, as if by the brush of a baby giant. The houses had no thatching. Thatching is not hygienic, but were mostly covered with a sort of peacock green tiles, bought cheap at a pre Raphaelite bazaar, or less frequently by some still more esoteric sort of terracotta bricks. The houses were not English, nor homelike, nor suited to the landscape, for the houses had not been built by free men for themselves, but at the fancy of a whimsical lord, but considered as a sort of elfin city in a pantomime. It was a really picturesque background for pantomimic proceedings. I fear Mr. Delroy's proceedings from the first rather deserved that name to begin with. He left the sign, the cask and the keg all wrapped and concealed in the car, but removed all the wraps of his own disguise and stood on the central patch of grass in that green uniform that looked all the more insolent for being as ragged as the grass, even that was less ragged than his red hair, which no red jungle of the east could imitate. Then he took out, almost tenderly, the large milk can and deposited it almost reverently on the island of turf. Then he stood beside it like Napoleon beside a gun, with an expression of tremendous seriousness and even severity. Then he drew his sword, and with that flashing weapon as with a flail, lashed and thrashed the echoing metal can till the din was deafening, and Mr. Hugby hastily got out of the car and withdrew to a slight distance, stopping his ears. Mr. Pump sat solidly at the steering wheel well, knowing it might be necessary to start in some haste. Gather. Gather. Gather. Pieceways. Shouted Patrick, still banging on the can and lamenting the difficulties of adapting McGregor's gathering to the name and occasion where landless, landless, landless pieceways. Two or three of the goat clad, recognizing Mr. Hugby with a guilty look, drew near with great caution, and the captain shouted at them as if they were an army covering Salisbury Plain. Citizens. He roared, saying anything that came into his head. Try the only original unadulterated mountain milk for which alone Mahomet came to the mountain, the original milk of the land flowing with milk and honey, the high quality of which could alone have popularized so unappetizing a combination. Try our milk. None others are genuine who can do without milk. Even whales can't do without milk. If any lady or gentleman keeps a favorite whale at home, now's their chance. The early whale catches the milk. Just look at our milk. If you say you can't look at the milk because it's in the can, well, look at the can. You must look at the can. You simply must. When duty whispers, lo, thou must. He bellowed at the top of his voice in a highly impromptu peroration. When duty whispers, lo, thou must, the youth replies, I can. And with the word can, he hit the can with a shocking and shattering noise like a peal of demoniac bells of steel. This introductory speech is open to criticism from those who regard it as intended for the study rather than the stage. The present chronicler, who has no aim save truth, is bound to record that for its own unscrupulous purpose it was extremely successful, a great mass of the citizens of Peaceways having been attracted by the noise of one man shouting like a crowd. There are crowds who do not care to revolt, but there are no crowds who do not like someone else to do it for them, a fact which the safest oligarchs may be wise to learn. But Delroy's ultimate triumph, I regret to say, consisted in actually handing to a few of the foremost of his audience some samples of his blameless beverage. The fact was certainly striking. Some were paralyzed with surprise. Some were abruptly broken double with laughter. Many chuckled, some cheered. All looked radiantly toward the eccentric orator. And yet the radiance died quietly and suddenly from their faces, and only because one little old man had joined the group. A little old man in white linen with a white pointed beard and a white powder puff of hair like thistledown, a man whom almost every man present could have killed with the left arm. End of chapter 18. You ain't heard about Moto Casino. Moto has real Vegas slots.
[28:51]
A
Any game you can find on the floor in Vegas, you can play it on Moto.
[28:53]
B
I like my slots hot Moto Free to play like food stamps in line at the grocery store At a funeral in traffic Keep your eyes on the road Hop on Moto Casino. Moto Casino Got jackpots that are bigger than my belly Moto America's hottest Free
[29:06]
A
to play Social casino Download the Moto Casino app today. Moto Casino is a social casino board. We're prohibited in the purchase necessary. Visit Moto Us for more details. America Social Casino.