Manchurian Books

The thought of those early days brings back to my
nostrils the faint smell of scent that was always in the air, marbled
now with streaks of this drug and now of that, and to my eyes the rows
of jejune glass bottles with gold labels, mirror-reflected, that stood
behind him. My aunt, I remember, used sometimes to come into the shop
in a state of aggressive sprightliness, a sort of connubial ragging
expedition, and get much fun over the abbreviated Latinity of those gilt
inscriptions. "Ol Amjig, George," she would read derisively, "and he
pretends it's almond oil! Snap!--and that's mustard. Did you ever,
George?
"Look at him, George, looking dignified. I'd like to put an old label
on to him round the middle like his bottles are, with Ol Pondo on it.
That's Latin for Impostor, George MUST be. He'd look lovely with a
stopper."
"YOU want a stopper," said my uncle, projecting his face....
My aunt, dear soul, was in those days quite thin and slender, with a
delicate rosebud completion and a disposition to connubial badinage, to
a sort of gentle skylarking.


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