o round! Argosies! Venice! Empire!"

My uncle suddenly rose to his feet.

"You think it over, George. You think it over! And come up on Sunday
to the new place--we got rooms in Gower Street now--and see your aunt.
She's often asked for you, George often and often, and thrown it up at
me about that bit of property--though I've always said and always
will, that twenty-five shillings in the pound is what I'll pay you and
interest up to the nail. And think it over. It isn't me I ask you to
help. It's yourself. It's your aunt Susan. It's the whole concern.
It's the commerce of your country. And we want you badly. I tell you
straight, I know my limitations. You could take this place, you could
make it go! I can see you at it--looking rather sour. Woosh is the word,
George."

And he smiled endearingly.

"I got to dictate a letter," he said, ending the smile, and vanished
into the outer room.

III

I didn't succumb without a struggle to my uncle's allurements. Indeed, I
held out for a week while I contemplated life and my prospects. It was a
crowded and muddled contemplation. It invaded even my sleep.

My interview with the Registrar, my talk with my uncle, my abrupt
discovery of the hopeless futility of my passion for Marion, had
combined to bring me to sense of crisis. What was I going to do with
life?

I remember certain phases of my indecisions very well.

I remember going home from our talk. I went down Farringdon Street to
the Embankment because I thought to go home by Holborn and Oxford Street
would be too crowded for thinking.... That piece of Embankment
from Blackfriars to Westminster still reminds me of that momentous
hesitation.

You know, from first to last, I saw the business with my eyes open, I
saw its ethical and moral values quite clearly. Never for a moment do
I remember myself faltering from my persuasion that the sale of
Tono-Bungay was a thoroughly dishonest proceeding. The stuff was, I
perceived, a mischievous trash, slightly stimulating, aromatic and
attractive, likely to become a bad habit and train people in the
habitual use of stronger tonics and insidiously dangerous to people with
defective kidneys. It would cost about sevenpence the large bottle to
make, including bottling, and we were to sell it at half a crown plus
the cost of the patent medicine stamp. A thing that I will confess
deterred me from the outset far more than the sense of dishonesty in
this affair, was the supreme sillin