his button-holing the president of the Pepys Society.

"I say, is there any black-lead in Pepys? You know--black-lead--for
grates! OR DOES HE PASS IT OVER AS A MATTER OF COURSE?"

He became in those days the terror of eminent historians. "Don't want
your drum and trumpet history--no fear," he used to say. "Don't want
to know who was who's mistress, and why so-and-so devastated such a
province; that's bound to be all lies and upsy-down anyhow. Not my
affair. Nobody's affair now. Chaps who did it didn't clearly know....
What I want to know is, in the Middle Ages, did they do anything for
Housemaid's Knee? What did they put in their hot baths after jousting,
and was the Black Prince--you know the Black Prince--was he enameled
or painted, or what? I think myself, black-leaded--very likely--like
pipe-clay--but DID they use blacking so early?"

So it came about that in designing and writing those Moggs' Soap
Advertisements, that wrought a revolution in that department of
literature, my uncle was brought to realise not only the lost history,
but also the enormous field for invention and enterprise that lurked
among the little articles, the dustpans and mincers, the mousetraps
and carpet-sweepers that fringe the shops of the oilman and domestic
ironmonger. He was recalled to one of the dreams of his youth, to his
conception of the Ponderevo Patent Flat that had been in his mind so
early as the days before I went to serve him at Wimblehurst. "The Home,
George," he said, "wants straightening up. Silly muddle! Things that get
in the way. Got to organise it."

For a time he displayed something like the zeal of a genuine social
reformer in relation to these matters.