uch special business. For my uncle it was a period
of stupendous inflation. Each time I met him I found him more confident,
more comprehensive, more consciously a factor in great affairs. Soon he
was no longer an associate of merely business men; he was big enough for
the attentions of greater powers.

I grew used to discovering some item of personal news about him in
my evening paper, or to the sight of a full-page portrait of him in a
sixpenny magazine. Usually the news was of some munificent act,
some romantic piece of buying or giving or some fresh rumour of
reconstruction. He saved, you will remember, the Parbury Reynolds
for the country. Or at times, it would be an interview or my uncle's
contribution to some symposium on the "Secret of Success," or such-like
topic. Or wonderful tales of his power of work, of his wonderful
organisation to get things done, of his instant decisions and remarkable
power of judging his fellow-men. They repeated his great mot: "Eight
hour working day--I want eighty hours!"

He became modestly but resolutely "public." They cartooned him in Vanity
Fair. One year my aunt, looking indeed a very gracious, slender lady,
faced the portrait of the King in the great room at Burlington House,
and the next year saw a medallion of my uncle by Ewart, looking out upon
the world, proud and imperial, but on the whole a trifle too prominently
convex, from the walls of the New Gallery.

I shared only intermittently in his social experiences. People knew of
me, it is true, and many of them sought to make through me a sort of
flank attack upon him, and there was a legend, owing, very unreasonably,
partly to my growing scientific reputation and partly to an element of
reserve in my manner, that I played a much larger share in planning
his operations than was actually the case. This led to one or two very
intimate private dinners, to my inclusion in one or two house parties
and various odd offers of introductions and services that I didn't for
the most part accept. Among other people who sought me in this way
was Archie Garvell, now a smart, impecunious soldier of no particular
distinction, who would, I think, have been quite prepared to develop any
sporting instincts I possessed, and who was beautifully unaware of our
former contact. He was always offering me winners; no doubt in a
spirit of anticipatory exchange for some really good thing in our more
scientific and certain method of getting something fo