Select Conversations with an Uncle Author:H. G. Wells Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GREAT CHANGE My uncle had been hectic all day. I knew and dreaded what was coming, and said nothing that by any chance could lead up to it. He absent-m... more »indedly tipped the emu sixpence. Then we came to the wart hog. "A bachelor," he said, meditatively, scratching the brute's back. I hastily felt for a saving topic in the apprehensive darkness of my mind, and could find none. " I expect I shall be married in October," said my uncle. Then, sighing: " The idyll of my engagement was shortlived." It was out. Now, the day—my last idle day with my poor uncle—was a hideous wreck. All the topics he hadfluttered round vanished, and, cold and awful, there loomed over us the one great topic. "What do you think of marriage, George ?" said my uncle, after a pause, prodding the wart hog suddenly. " That's your privilege," said I. " Married men don't dare to think of it. Bigamy." " Privilege! Is it such a headlong wreck of one's ideals as they say?" said my uncle. "Is that dreamland furniture really so unstable in use ?" " Of course," said I, " it's different from what one expects. But it seems to be worse for the other party. At least to judge from the novels they engender in their agony." " So far as I can see," he proceeded, " what happens is very similar to a thing a scientific chap was explaining to me the other day. There are some little beasts in the sea called ascidians, and they begin life as cheerful little tadpole things, with waggling tails and big expressive eyes.They move freely about hither and thither, and often travel vast distances in an adventurous way. Then what he called metamorphosis begins. The little tadpole waggles his way to a rock and fixes himself head downward. Then he undergoes the oddest changes, becomes indeed a mere vegetative ex...« less