goes on day by day becoming more of a lunatic. I could never
understand why there is such a close bond between him and Henry, unless
it is because they enjoy arguing together. Henry, being a Scotsman,
likes argument; and William, being an Irishman, likes hearing his own
voice. Thus they seldom got bored with each other.

The time we did get bored with William was when he turned inventor. It
came rather as a surprise to us; and when he began to be abstracted,
profoundly meditative, almost sullen, with an apparent desire to be
alone, we thought at first that it was the onset of hydrophobia. In
fact, we looked it up on the back of the dog-licence to make sure.

William's remarks next became irrelevant. For example, after being
wrapped in silence for over half an hour, he suddenly flung out the
question, 'How many people do you know who possess a trousers-press?

Faced with the problem, I confessed I could not connect a single
acquaintance with a trousers-press. 'Henry hasn't got one,' I admitted.

'Neither have I,' said William. (I didn't doubt that for an instant.)
He went on to remark that he knew many men in many walks of life, and
only two of them owned a trousers-press, and they shared it between
them. Yet the inventor of this apparently negligible article had made
a small fortune out of the idea.

'If,' concluded William, 'you can make a small fortune out of a thing
that you can dispense with, how much more can you make out of something
that you can't do without?'

This sentence I give as William composed it, and from its construction