G.K Chesterton and Perception Answer the following questions in a few complete sentences. 1. Why does he mention the conversation about the...

In the first paragraph of "A Piece of
Chalk," Chesterton mentions his conversation with the "very square and sensible old
woman" in the kitchen, partly to establish what he was doing (drawing pictures on brown
paper with colored chalk) and partly for the humorous contrast between her practical attitude
and his whimsical artistic preoccupations. This attitude to his art (Chesterton was, in fact, a
very talented artist who studied at the Slade School and sometimes illustrated his own work), is
further demonstrated by his extravagant descriptions of what and how he intended to
draw:

Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the
first toil of creation, and with a bright-colored chalk or two you can pick out points of fire
in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first fierce stars that sprang out
of divine darkness.

This is related to his point about
white and virtue. Chesterton wants to use brown paper because he regards white as a positive
color, not the mere absence of color. Brown is his background, analogous to the nothingness out
of which God creates everything. White is too important a feature of his work to be the
background. This is why he compares white to virtue as a positive presence: white is not merely
the absence of color, just as virtue is not merely the absence of vice:

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral
dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell... Chastity does
not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word,
God paints in many colors; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as
when He paints in white.

Chesterton's point in the last
paragraph is that he has forgotten to bring white chalk with him, then he suddenly and joyfully
realizes that he has vastly more white chalk than he could ever use:

Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for his
hour-glass. Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought some salt water with
him for his chemical experiments. I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk. The
landscape was made entirely of white chalk. White chalk was piled more miles until it met the
sky. I stooped and broke a piece of the rock I sat on...

This conclusion extravagantly reinforces Chesterton's point that God provides for him
far more generously and thoroughly than he would ever think to provide for himself.