Excerpt from A Suburban Pastoral: And Other Tales The pleasing fiction thus propounded soon took on the proportions of a full-grown myth. Fancy added detail to the picture of this imagi nary uncle, until the idea of his life did sweetly creep into their study of imagination; and his household. His generous mahogany, his stables. Hothouses. And wide verandas acquired a cer tain definiteness. At times they would pause before the gate of some uncommonly inviting villa, and exclaim: What a place for an uncle! In the absence of the real article they went as far as to discuss the feasibility of creating an artificial one. Adopting a hint from the cata logue of the Neophogen University, they won dered whether it might not be possible to hire some learned man who had failed in business, rent a convenient country house. And set him up as an uncle. His sole duty would be to dis pense an open hospitality to his nephews, from resources secretly provided by themselves. But this scheme was too expensive to be seri ously thought of. It remained a beautiful dream. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.