I was his nephew, his peculiar and intimate nephew. I was hanging on to his coat-tails all the way through. I made pills with him in the chemist's shop at Wimblehurst before he began. I was, you might say, the stick of his rocket; and after our tremendous soar, after he had played with millions, a golden rain in the sky, after my bird's-eye view of the modern world, I fell again, a little scarred and blistered perhaps, two and twenty years older, with my youth gone, my manhood eaten in upon, but greatly edified, into this Thames-side yard, into these white heats and hammerings, amidst the fine realites of steel—to think it all over in my leisure and jot down the notes and inconsecutive observations that make this book. It was more, you know, than a figurative soar. The zenith of that career was surely our flight across the channel in the Lord Roberts B....
Text: H.G. Wells, Tono-Bungay (1909)
Note: It's funny the things you find in book shops when you're not looking for them. When I was at boarding school, the chair where I preferred to read in the library when I wasn't taking notes in a carrell placed my right leg in intimate proximity to Tono-Bungay. And today on Mercer Street a Journeyman Library edition of the novel stared me directly in the face. When I finally was able to focus (the sun and heat were unbearable; that's what drove me into the store), it was by far the most attractive thing I saw all day waiting for my appointment. The jungle animals are dressing strangely these days.
Guns N' Roses: Welcome To The Jungle (Link)
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