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
about pluck, and he was reluctant to bribe his enemies. It is a very
dangerous thing to have notions about anything.

* * * * *

WANTED, A WORD-SLAYER.

_Fin de Siecle!_ Ah, that phrase, though taste spurn it, I
Fear, threatens staying with us to eternity.
Who _will_ deliver
Our nerves, all a-quiver,
From that pest-term, and its fellow "modernity"?

* * * * *

[Illustration: AT THE DOOR; OR, PATERFAMILIAS AND THE YOUNG SPARK.

_Electric Light_. "WHAT, WON'T YOU LET ME IN--A DEAR LITTLE CHAP LIKE
ME?"

_Householder_. "AH! YOU'RE A LITTLE TOO DEAR FOR ME--AT PRESENT."]

* * * * *

AT THE DOOR; OR, PATERFAMILIAS AND THE YOUNG SPARK.

(_AN ELECTRICAL ECLOGUE._)

["The cost is still heavy, no doubt, and the electric light
still stand