His cigar and cigarette ends amounted to over thirty pounds in weight, which he had pressed into various shapes. A strange piece of architecture, with many turrets and towers, all shining like burnished silver, claimed attention. "What have you here?" "Five hundred empty milk-tins. I have saved them all. They have all been full. I always use the 'Milkmaid' brand." "I suppose you alter your plan of your building sometimes?" "Oh yes," he said; "I make cathedrals sometimes."
Twenty-four flat cardboard boxes, with covers on, attracted me. "What have you got in these boxes?" "Ah! I have got something to show you," and he proceeded to take off the lids. One look dazzled me, for never in my life had I seen such a weird combination of brilliant colours; the old vermilion seemed quite pale and insipid in comparison. Blues, greens, yellows, and pinks of every shade predominated; but almost every other colour and shade of colour was represented, and their combined effect was stupendous. Some of the boxes were full of little cubes, others of narrow strips; some full of flat pieces about one inch square; others with the same substance graduated in different sizes. "All orange-peel, Mr. Holmes, picked up in the streets; all of it would have been wasted but for me." "But what good is it now?" I asked. He looked sadly at me, and said: "Good, good! Why, it shows what can be done." Whether it was worth the doing did not concern him; but my question had offended him, so I had to make peace. Half a crown soothed his wounded feelings. I then asked him how he did it all. "Picked 'em up, flattened 'em, cut 'em up, and coloured 'em," was all I could get out of him. "Do you know what's in these boxes?" producing four boxes of similar pattern, and opening them. They contained small cubes of material, and their colours, at any rate, were of modest hue. I confessed again my ignorance. "Taste!" I was much alarmed, but I tasted. "Potatoes?" "Right," he said. "That's how I save all my potatoes. They do to put in my broth." "But how do you get them all to this size and colour?" I asked. "That's my secret," he said. I asked him if he was saving "tops and bottoms" now. "Only the new uns; I have made use of the old uns. I'll show you." He went on his knees, and from a store under his bed he produced several three-pound glass jars full of some brown meal, of varying degrees of coarseness. "All good--all good food! Microbes can't live in bread fifty years old. These are 'tops and bottoms.'" He had broken up his old bread, pounded it with a hammer, put the crumbs through different sized sieves, and stored the resulting material in glass jars. "Beats Quaker Oats, Grape Nuts, and 'Sunny Jim,'" he said. "I can stand a siege. I just boil some water, take two spoonfuls of 'Milkmaid,' two tablespoonfuls of 'tops and bottoms,' and I have good milk porridge in three minutes. I have a pot of Bovril, too, and when I want some soup, hot water, Bovril, and desiccated potatoes or potato-powder give it to me. The old man is not such a fool as people think!" But again he put me into a tight place. He wanted me to buy, or find customers for, his granulated "tops and bottoms." He felt sure if people only knew how good and nice the "food" was, they would buy it readily.