ane of a
tendency demanding constant alertness from me, a tendency to jerk up its
nose at unexpected moments and slide back upon me, the application of an
engine would be little short of suicide.

But that I will tell about later. The point I was coming to was that I
did not realise until after the crash how recklessly my uncle had kept
his promise of paying a dividend of over eight per cent. on the ordinary
shares of that hugely over-capitalised enterprise, Household Services.

I drifted out of business affairs into my research much more than either
I or my uncle had contemplated. Finance was much less to my taste
than the organisation of the Tono-Bungay factory. In the new field of
enterprise there was a great deal of bluffing and gambling, of taking
chances and concealing material facts--and these are hateful things to
the scientific type of mind. It wasn't fear I felt so much as an uneasy
inaccuracy. I didn't realise dangers, I simply disliked the sloppy,
relaxing quality of this new sort of work. I was at last constantly
making excuses not to come up to him in London. The latter part of his
business career recedes therefore beyond the circle of any particular
life. I lived more or less with him; I talked, I advised, I helped him
at times to fight his Sunday crowd at Crest Hill, but I did not follow
nor guide him. From the Do Ut time onward he rushed up the financial
world like a bubble in water and left me like some busy water-thing down
below in the deeps.

Anyhow, he was an immense success. The public was, I think, particularly
attracted by the homely familiarity of his field of work--you never lost
sight of your investment they felt, with the name on the house-flannel
and shaving-strop--and its allegiance was secured by the Egyptian
solidity of his apparent results. Tono-Bungay, after its reconstruction,
paid thirteen, Moggs seven, Domestic Utilities had been a safe-looking
nine; here was Household Services with eight; on such a showing he had
merely to buy and sell Roeburn's Antiseptic fluid, Razor soaks and Bath
crystals in three weeks to clear twenty thousand pounds.

I do think that as a matter of fact Roeburn's was good value at the
price at which he gave it to the public, at least until it was strained
by ill-conserved advertisement. It was a period of expansion and
confidence; much money was seeking investment and "Industrials" were the
fashion. Prices were rising all round. There remained little more