Explore "Tono-Bungay" by H.G. Wells on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It illustrates the romantic element in modern commerce that my uncle met young Moggs at a city dinner -- I think it was the Bottle-makers' Company -- when both were some way advanced beyond the initial sobriety of the occasion. This was the grandson of the original Moggs, and a very typical instance of an educated, cultivated, degenerate plutocrat. His people had taken him about in his youth as the Ruskins took their John and fostered a passion for history in him, and the actual management of the Moggs' industry had devolved upon a cousin and a junior partner.
Mr. Moggs, being of a studious and refined disposition, had just decided -- after a careful search for a congenial subject in which he would not be constantly reminded of soap -- to devote himself to the History of the Thebaid, when this cousin died suddenly and precipitated responsibilities upon him. In the frankness of conviviality, Moggs bewailed the uncongenial task thus thrust into his hands, and my uncle offered to lighten his burden by a partnership then and there. They even got to terms -- extremely muzzy terms, but terms nevertheless.