Excerpt from As It Was in the Beginning Grenville was not the type to be readily excited, yet a glow of exceptional brilliance shone in his eyes as he met the searching gaze of his friend, and wondered if Fenton could be jesting. That he had made no reply whatsoever to Fenton's proposition he failed to realize till Gerald spoke again. Well, Sid, demanded that impetuous lieutenant of finance, gone dumb? Perhaps I haven't made it plain, and he particularized on his fingers. You get an ocean trip of eight or ten weeks' duration, tropic sun at its best, leisurely business without a fleck of bother, absolute rest, good provender, thorough recuper ation, your entire expenses cheerfully paid, vast service rendered to me, no time lost on your equilibrator, time for countless new inventions to sprout in your fertile brain - and the unutterable joy of escaping this abom inable climate, practically at once! 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.