Other newspapers also amused themselves, and HIGLINSON became
notorious. The Blacking-cream sold better than ever, and brought him
enormous profits. But if he attempted to spend those profits on any
object, good or bad, it was always insisted that he was simply doing
it for advertisement. The public became interested in HIGLINSON; and
untrue stories about his private life appeared freely in personal
columns. He was rich enough now to have relinquished his business, but
those idiotic notions about pluck prevented him from doing this. He
meant to go through with it, and to make the public believe in him
just as much as they believed in the Blacking-cream. He found about
this time someone who did believe in him; he began to change his views
about marriage; he was to some extent consoled.

He was passing over the bridge one night, and had just bought
an evening paper. His own name caught his eye. It was the usual
paragraph, not more hateful to him than others that had appeared, as
far as he himself was concerned; but her name was in it as well, and
he imagined to himself just how she would feel when she read it. He
walked on a few paces, and then his pluck all vanished suddenly, as
if it had been blown away into space, and it did not seem to be worth
while to stop in such a world any longer.

The jury returned the usual verdict; but _The Scalpel_ did not
hesitate to hint that this suicide had simply been intended as an
advertisement, and that HIGLINSON had always supposed that his rescue
would be a certainty.

He might have saved himself all this, of course, by a few full-page
advertisements in _The Scalpel_. But then he had those idiotic notions