formula. For we altered all our formulae--invariably weakening them
enormously as sales got ahead.

In a little while--so it seems to me now--we were employing travelers
and opening up Great Britain at the rate of a hundred square miles a
day. All the organisation throughout was sketched in a crude, entangled,
half-inspired fashion by my uncle, and all of it had to be worked out
into a practicable scheme of quantities and expenditure by me. We had a
lot of trouble finding our travelers; in the end at least half of them
were Irish-Americans, a wonderful breed for selling medicine. We had
still more trouble over our factory manager, because of the secrets of
the inner room, and in the end we got a very capable woman, Mrs. Hampton
Diggs, who had formerly managed a large millinery workroom, whom we
could trust to keep everything in good working order without finding out
anything that wasn't put exactly under her loyal and energetic nose.
She conceived a high opinion of Tono-Bungay and took it in all forms
and large quantities so long as I knew her. It didn't seem to do her any
harm. And she kept the girls going quite wonderfully.

My uncle's last addition to the Tono-Bungay group was the Tono-Bungay
Mouthwash. The reader has probably read a hundred times that inspiring
inquiry of his, "You are Young Yet, but are you Sure Nothing has Aged
your Gums?"

And after that we took over the agency for three or four good American
lines that worked in with our own, and could be handled with it; Texan
Embrocation, and "23--to clear the system" were the chief....

I set down these bare facts. To me they are all linked with the figure
of my uncle. In some of the old seventeenth and early eighteenth century