for
my uncle to do therefore, in his climb to the high unstable crest
of Financial Greatness but, as he said, to "grasp the cosmic oyster,
George, while it gaped," which, being translated, meant for him to buy
respectable businesses confidently and courageously at the vendor's
estimate, add thirty or forty thousand to the price and sell them again.
His sole difficulty indeed was the tactful management of the load
of shares that each of these transactions left upon his hands. But I
thought so little of these later things that I never fully appreciated
the peculiar inconveniences of that until it was too late to help him.

III

When I think of my uncle near the days of his Great Boom and in
connection with the actualities of his enterprises, I think of him as
I used to see him in the suite of rooms he occupied in the Hardingham
Hotel, seated at a great old oak writing-table, smoking, drinking, and
incoherently busy; that was his typical financial aspect--our evenings,
our mornings, our holidays, our motor-car expeditions, Lady Grove and
Crest Hill belong to an altogether different set of memories.

These rooms in the Hardingham were a string of apartments along one
handsome thick-carpeted corridor. All the doors upon the corridor were
locked except the first; and my uncle's bedroom, breakfast-room and
private sanctum were the least accessible and served by an entrance from
the adjacent passage, which he also used at times as a means of
escape from importunate callers. The most eternal room was a general
waiting-room and very business-like in quality; it had one or two uneasy
sofas, a number of chairs, a green baize table, and a collection of the
very best Moggs and Tone posters: and the plush carpets normal to the
Hardingham had been replaced by a grey-green cork linoleum; Here I
would always find a remarkable miscellany of people presided over by
a peculiarly faithful and ferocious looking commissioner, Ropper, who
guarded the door that led a step nearer my uncle. Usually there would
be a parson or so, and one or two widows; hairy, eyeglassy, middle-aged
gentlemen, some of them looking singularly like Edward Ponderevos
who hadn't come off, a variety of young and youngish men more or less
attractively dressed, some with papers protruding from their pockets,
others with their papers decently concealed. And wonderful, incidental,
frowsy people.

All these persons maintained a practically hopeless siege--sometimes for
w