If it did not come right then,
he would bother no more about it. Why should he? There was so much else in
life besides literature. He had plenty of money, and was determined in any
case to enjoy himself. So did his thoughts run as he leaned back on the
cushions of a first-class carriage, glancing casually through the evening
paper. Presently his eye was caught by a paragraph narrating an odd
calamity which had overtaken a scene carpenter, an honest, respectable,
sober, hard-working man, who had fulfilled all social obligations as
perfectly as the most exacting could desire, until the day he had conceived
the idea of a machine for the better exhibition of advertisements on the
hoardings. His system was based on the roller-towel. The roller was moved
by clockwork, and the advertisements went round like the towel. At first he
spent his spare time and his spare money upon it, but as the hobby took
possession of him, he devoted all his time and all his money to it; then he
pawned his clothes, and then he raised money on the furniture; the brokers
came in, and finally the poor fellow was taken to a lunatic asylum, and his
wife and family were thrown on the parish. The story impressed Hubert
strangely.
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