Manchurian Books

It would cost about sevenpence the large bottle to
make, including bottling, and we were to sell it at half a crown plus
the cost of the patent medicine stamp. A thing that I will confess
deterred me from the outset far more than the sense of dishonesty in
this affair, was the supreme silliness of the whole concern. I still
clung to the idea that the world of men was or should be a sane and just
organisation, and the idea that I should set myself gravely, just at
the fine springtime of my life, to developing a monstrous bottling and
packing warehouse, bottling rubbish for the consumption of foolish,
credulous and depressed people, had in it a touch of insanity. My early
beliefs still clung to me. I felt assured that somewhere there must be
a hitch in the fine prospect of ease and wealth under such conditions;
that somewhere, a little overgrown, perhaps, but still traceable, lay a
neglected, wasted path of use and honour for me.
My inclination to refuse the whole thing increased rather than
diminished at first as I went along the Embankment.


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