I have,
indeed, told much of it elsewhere. It is to be found set out at
length, painfully at length, in my uncle's examination and mine in
the bankruptcy proceedings, and in my own various statements after his
death. Some people know everything in that story, some know it all
too well, most do not want the details, it is the story of a man of
imagination among figures, and unless you are prepared to collate
columns of pounds, shillings and pence, compare dates and check
additions, you will find it very unmeaning and perplexing. And after
all, you wouldn't find the early figures so much wrong as STRAINED. In
the matter of Moggs and Do Ut, as in the first Tono-Bungay promotion
and in its reconstruction, we left the court by city standards without
a stain on our characters. The great amalgamation of Household Services
was my uncle's first really big-scale enterprise and his first display
of bolder methods: for this we bought back Do Ut, Moggs (going strong
with a seven per cent. dividend) and acquired Skinnerton's polishes, the
Riffleshaw properties and the Runcorn's mincer and coffee-mill business.
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