It was the sort of nonsense one would talk to make Ewart laugh
and set him going on to still odder possibilities. I thought it was part
of my uncle's way of talking. But I've learnt differently since. The
whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee something that will
presently be needed and put it out of reach, and then to haggle yourself
wealthy. You buy up land upon which people will presently want to build
houses, you secure rights that will bar vitally important developments,
and so on, and so on. Of course the naive intelligence of a boy does not
grasp the subtler developments of human inadequacy. He begins life with
a disposition to believe in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not
realise how casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and
custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is a power
as irresistible as a head master's to check mischievous and foolish
enterprises of every sort. I will confess that when my uncle talked of
cornering quinine, I had a clear impression that any one who contrived
to do that would pretty certainly go to jail.
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