turpentinous smell in,—wood-packing for hot baths—a Certain Cure for the scourge of Influenza! There's all these patent grain foods,—what Americans call cereals. I believe I'm right, sir, in saying they're sawdust."
"No!" said my uncle, removing his cigar; "as far as I can find out it's really grain,—spoilt grain. . . . I've been going into that."
"Well, there you are!" said Ewart. "Say it's spoilt grain. It carried out my case just as well. Your modern commerce is no more buying and selling than—sculpture. It's mercy—it's salvation. It's rescue work! It takes all sorts of fallen commodities by the hand and raises them. Cana isn't in it. You turn water—into Tono-Bungay."
"Tono-Bungay's all right," said my uncle, suddenly grave. "We aren't talking of Tono-Bungay."
"Your nephew, sir, is hard; he wants everything to go to a sort of predestinated end; he's a Calvinist of Commerce. Offer him a dustbin full of stuff; he calls it refuse—passes by on the other side. Now you, sir—you'd make cinders respect themselves."
My uncle regarded him dubiously for a moment. But there was a touch of appreciation in his eye.
"Might make 'em into a sort of sanitary brick," he reflected over his cigar end.
"Or a friable biscuit. Why not? You might advertise: 'Why are Birds so Bright? Because they digest their food perfectly! Why do they digest their food so perfectly? Because they have a gizzard! Why hasn't man a gizzard? Because he can buy Ponderevo's Ashpit Triturating, Friable Biscuit—Which is Better.'"
He delivered the last words in a shout with his hairy hand flourished in the air. . . .
