"Well, it's about a carpenter and a poetic Victorian child, you know,
and some shavin's. The child made no end out of the shavin's. So
might you. Powder 'em. They might be anything. Soak 'em in
jipper,--Xylo-tobacco! Powder'em and get a little tar and turpentinous
smell in,--wood-packing for hot baths--a Certain Cure for the scourge
of Influenza! There's all these patent grain foods,--what Americans call
cereals. I believe I'm right, sir, in saying they're sawdust."

"No!" said my uncle, removing his cigar; "as far as I can find out it's
really grain,--spoilt grain.... I've been going into that."

"Well, there you are!" said Ewart. "Say it's spoilt grain. It carried
out my case just as well. Your modern commerce is no more buying and
selling than sculpture. It's mercy--it's salvation. It's rescue work! It
takes all sorts of fallen commodities by the hand and raises them. Cana
isn't in it. You turn water--into Tono-Bungay."

"Tono-Bungay's all right," said my uncle, suddenly grave. "We aren't
talking of Tono-Bungay."

"Your nephew, sir, is hard; he wants everything to go to a sort of
predestinated end; he's a Calvinist of Commerce. Offer him a dustbin
full of stuff; he calls it refuse--passes by on the other side. Now YOU,
sir you'd make cinders respect themselves."

My uncle regarded him dubiously for a moment. But there was a touch of
appreciation in his eye.

"Might make 'em into a sort of sanitary brick," he reflected over his
cigar end.