's got loose from
a garden somewhere. You know what horseradish is--grows like
wildfire--spreads--spreads. I stood at the end of the platform looking
at the stuff and thinking about it. 'Like fame,' I thought, 'rank and
wild where it isn't wanted. Why don't the really good things in life
grow like horseradish?' I thought. My mind went off in a peculiar way
it does from that to the idea that mustard costs a penny a tin--I bought
some the other day for a ham I had. It came into my head that it would
be ripping good business to use horseradish to adulterate mustard. I had
a sort of idea that I could plunge into business on that, get rich and
come back to my own proper monumental art again. And then I said, 'But
why adulterate? I don't like the idea of adulteration.'"

"Shabby," said my uncle, nodding his head. "Bound to get found out!"

"And totally unnecessary, too! Why not do up a mixture--three-quarters
pounded horseradish and a quarter mustard--give it a fancy name--and
sell it at twice the mustard price. See? I very nearly started the
business straight away, only something happened. My train came along."

"Jolly good ideer," said my uncle. He looked at me. "That really is an
ideer, George," he said.

"Take shavin's, again! You know that poem of Longfellow's, sir, that
sounds exactly like the first declension. What is it?--'Marr's a maker,
men say!'"

My uncle nodded and gurgled some quotation that died away.

"Jolly good poem, George," he said in an aside to me.

"Well, it's about a carpenter and a poetic Victorian child, you know,
and some shavin's. The child made no end out of the shavin's. So
might you. Powder 'em. They might be anything. Soak 'em in
jipper,--Xylo-tobacco! Powder'em and get a little tar and 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