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ly isolated. In places like Wimblehurst the tradesmen's lives always are isolated socially, all of them, unless they have a sister or a bosom friend among the other wives, but the husbands met in various bar-parlours or in the billiard-room of the Eastry Arms. But my uncle, for the most part, spent his evenings at home. When first he arrived in Wimblehurst I think he had spread his effect of abounding ideas and enterprise rather too aggressively; and Wimblehurst, after a temporary subjugation, had rebelled and done its best to make a butt of him. His appearance in a public-house led to a pause in any conversation that was going on. "Come to tell us about everything, Mr. Pond'revo?" some one would say politely. "You wait," my uncle used to answer, disconcerted, and sulk for the rest of his visit. Or some one with an immense air of innocence would remark to the world generally, "They're talkin' of rebuildin' Wimblehurst all over again, I'm told. Anybody heard anything of it? Going to make it a reg'lar smartgoin', enterprisin' place--kind of Crystal Pallas." "Earthquake and a pestilence before you get that," my uncle would mutter, to the infinite delight of every one, and add something inaudible about "Cold Mutton Fat."... III We were torn apart by a financial accident to my uncle of which I did not at first grasp the full bearings. He had developed what I regarded as an innocent intellectual recreation which he called stock-market meteorology. I think he got the idea from one use of curves in the graphic presentation of associated variations that he saw me plotting. He secured some of my squared paper and, having cast about for a time, decided to trace the rise and fall of certain lines and railways. "There's something in this, George," he said, and I little dreamt that among other things that were in it, was the whole of his spare money and most of what my mother had left to him in trust for me. "It's as plain as can be," he said. "See, here's one system of waves and here's another! These are prices for Union Pacifics--extending over a month. Now next week, mark my words, they'll be down one whole point. We're getting near the steep part of the curve again. See? It's absolutely scientific. It's verifiable. Well, and apply it! You buy in the hollow and sell on the crest, and there you are!" I was so convinced of the triviality of this amusement that to find at last that he had taken it in the most disast
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