"We're in luck at the same tune. My uncle Sol was found dead this
morning."

"Do you come in for much?"

"We don't know what he's left, but I'm down for a substantial
fraction in a will he made three years ago. Nobody knew it, but he's
been stark mad for the last six months. He took a bed-room out
Bordesley way, in a false name, and stored it with a ton or two of
tinned meats and vegetables. There the landlady found him lying dead
this morning; she learnt who he was from the papers in his pocket.
It's come out that he had made friends with some old boozer of that
neighbourhood; he told him that England was on the point of a grand
financial smash, and that half the population would die of hunger.
To secure himself, he began to lay in the stock of tinned
provisions. One can't help laughing, poor old chap! That's the
result, you see, of a life spent in sweating for money. As a young
man he had hard times, and when his invention succeeded, it put him
off balance a bit. I've often thought he had a crazy look in his
eye. He may have thrown away a lot of his money in mad tricks: who
knows?"

"That's the end the human race will come to," said Hilliard. "It'll
be driven mad and killed off by machinery. Before long there'll be
machines for washing and dressing people--machines for feeding
them--machines for----"

His wrathful imagination led him to grotesque ideas which ended in
laughter.