Before the visit was concluded there came to that small house containing so large a man a serious-miened delegation...They had come, their spokesman said between four-syllable coughs, to request Mr. Chesterton to accept the honorary post of under-sheriff for Bucks-Buckinghimashire County. Mr. Chesterton's roll-top torso writhed nervously. He shrank, he said, from honorary appointments of whatever kind. He bore not title to which he did not deliver duty. And would they be so good as to tell him the principle duty of an under-sheriff? The spokesman coughed and defined:

"To suppress riots against His Majesty's peace."

"Quite impossible," chanted Mr. Chesterton, for his speaking voice was a rising rhythm, cadenced and lofty. "It wouldn't do at all." He beamed explanatorily. "If there is ever any riot around here," he added, "I couldn't conscientiously suppress it, for I should be the principle rioter."

John B. Kennedy, June 28, 1936, New York Times
(quoted in Defiant Joy by Kevin Belmonte, pp. 270-271, [2011])