Explore "The Secret in the Hill" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was that obnoxious penny, I believe, which was responsible for my uncle's continued pursuit of his new Lobby, until the hobby itself became an obsession. If we had come home that first day empty-handed, I have little doubt but that his baulked imagination would have found itself some other and more practical outlet. As it was, the discovery was held by him to justify every proverb which values itself upon small beginnings. He was so little cast down by its meagreness, that there was no limit to the golden dreams of which he made it the basis. Most crazes, I fancy, are so built upon a pennyworth of fact.
He did not take out the sack again, but replaced it by a sponge-bag, and the bag, later, by a stout leathern purse. Finally, he decided that his trouser-pockets would serve all our needs, with the additional advantage that our hands would be freer thereby, and the risk of comment on our proceedings avoided. It may have been, for it had certainly little to feed upon. During those early weeks, beyond some scraps of old iron, we found nothing.