It's trash."

"There's no law against selling quack medicine that I know of," said
my aunt. She thought for a minute and became unusually grave. "It's our
only chance, George," she said. "If it doesn't go..."

There came the slamming of a door, and a loud bellowing from the next
apartment through the folding doors. "Here-er Shee Rulk lies Poo Tom
Bo--oling."

"Silly old Concertina! Hark at him, George!" She raised her voice.
"Don't sing that, you old Walrus, you! Sing 'I'm afloat!'"

One leaf of the folding doors opened and my uncle appeared.

"Hullo, George! Come along at last? Gossome tea-cake, Susan?"

"Thought it over George?" he said abruptly.

"Yes," said I.

"Coming in?"

I paused for a last moment and nodded yes.

"Ah!" he cried. "Why couldn't you say that a week ago?"

"I've had false ideas about the world," I said. "Oh! they don't matter
now! Yes, I'll come, I'll take my chance with you, I won't hesitate
again."

And I didn't. I stuck to that resolution for seven long years.

CHAPTER THE THIRD

HOW WE MADE TONO-BUNGAY HUM

I

So I made my peace with my uncle, and we set out upon this
bright enterprise of selling slightly injurious rubbish at
one-and-three-halfpence and two-and-nine a bottle, including the
Government stamp. We made Tono-Bungay hum! It brought us wealth,
influence, respect, the confidence of endless people. All that my uncle
promised me proved truth and understatement; Tono-Bungay carried me to
freedoms and powers that no life of scientific research, no passionate
service of humanity could ever have given me....

It was my uncle's genius that did it. No doubt he needed me,--I was,
I will admit, his indispensable right hand; but his was the brain to
conceive. He wrote every advertisement; some of them even he sketched.
You must remember that his were the days before the Time took to
enterprise and the vociferous hawking of that antiquated
Encyclopedia. That alluring, button-holing, let-me
-just-tell-you-quite-soberly-something-you-ought-to-know style of
newspaper advertisement, with every now and then a convulsive jump of
some attractive phrase into capitals, was then almost a novelty. "Many
people who are MODERATELY well think they are QUITE well," was one of
his early efforts. The jerks in capitals were, "DO NOT NEED DRUGS OR
MEDICINE," and "SIMPLY A PROPER REGIMEN TO GET YOU IN TONE." One was
warned against the chemist or druggist who pushed "much-advertised
nostrums