Welcome back everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales. This is your host

John Haggadorn. Today a brand new Father Brown story from G. K. Chesterton called The Three Tools of Death. Enjoy.

Both by calling and conviction, Father Brown knew better than most of us that every man is dignified when he's dead.

But even he felt a pang of inquiry. Every man is dignified when he's dead.

But even he felt a pang of incongruity

when he was knocked up a daybreak and told that Sir Aaron Armstrong

had been murdered.

There was something absurd and unseemly about a secret violence in connection was so entirely

entertaining and popular a figure, for Sir Aaron Armstrong was entertaining to the point of being comic,

and popular in such a manner as to be almost legendary it was like hearing that sunny Jim had hanged himself or that Mr. Pickwick

had died in Hanwell.

For though Sir Aaron was a philanthropist

and thus dealt with the darker side of our society,

he prided himself on dealing with it

in the brightest possible style.

His political and social speeches were cataracts of

anecdotes and loud laughter. His body health was of a bursting sort. His ethics

were all optimism. Eddie dealt with the drink problem, his favorite time. His total abstainer. The established story of his conversion was familiar on the

more puritanic platforms and pulpit. How he had been when only a boy drawn

away from Scott's theology to Scott's whiskey,

and how he had risen out of both and become, as he modestly put it,

what he was.

...