VOLUME 158, January 7, 1920
NEW WELLS FOR OLD.
Over the top of Part II. of The Outline of History I caught the smiling glance of the man in the opposite corner of the compartment.
"Good stuff that," he said, indicating the History with a jerk of his head.
"Quite," I agreed, maintaining my distance.
"Immense," he continued. "And it means the dawn of a new life for me. I'm Wells's hero. Every time I've appeared in his half-yearly masterpiece, ever since Tono Bungay. And look at the mess he's made of my life. Often I've had to start it under the cloud of mysterious parentage. Invariably I have been endowed with a Mind (capital M). Think of those uphill fights of mine against adverse conditions. And my unhappy marriages. He has led me into every variation of infidelity. When I did hit it off with my wife for once, he sent us to the Arctic regions as a punishment. In the depth of winter, too.
But, now he's taken up this History, I'm free. The dam has burst and strange things come floating down ..."