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.