where your swindle comes in."

"H'm," I said. "It's a thing you either see or don't see."

"I'd like to know what sort of trading isn't a swindle in its way.
Everybody who does a large advertised trade is selling something common
on the strength of saying it's uncommon. Look at Chickson--they made him
a baronet. Look at Lord Radmore, who did it on lying about the alkali in
soap! Rippin' ads those were of his too!"

"You don't mean to say you think doing this stuff up in bottles and
swearing it's the quintessence of strength and making poor devils buy it
at that, is straight?"

"Why not, George? How do we know it mayn't be the quintessence to them
so far as they're concerned?"

"Oh!" I said, and shrugged my shoulders.

"There's Faith. You put Faith in 'em.... I grant our labels are a bit
emphatic. Christian Science, really. No good setting people against the
medicine. Tell me a solitary trade nowadays that hasn't to be--emphatic.
It's the modern way! Everybody understands it--everybody allows for it."

"But the world would be no worse and rather better, if all this stuff of
yours was run down a conduit into the Thames."

"Don't see that, George, at all. 'Mong other things, all our people
would be out of work. Unemployed! I grant you Tono-Bungay MAY be--not
QUITE so good a find for the world as Peruvian bark, but the point