Mr. Trimblerigg, though it often annoyed him, was not the kind of man to fear opposition when it came. He did not avoid the challenge, he went out to meet it. But he saw that the tussle was coming, and in order to gain access of strength as expeditiously as possible for the ordeal that lay ahead he decided that the psychological moment had come for him to visit America. Offers of a sensational character had, of course, already reached him. One Lecture Agency had assured him that if his halo would stand the change of climate, a scientific investigation, and the nervous strain incidental to a daily appearance before mammoth audiences, it could guarantee that thousands should be turned away in every city, and no seats sold to the public under five dollars a head. Mr. Trimblerigg, when the time came, decided otherwise. He announced that admission was to be free. When America heard that, it first fell down and worshipped him, then in panic began to mobilize its army, double its police force, set up steel barricades and enlarge its cemeteries in order to cope with the record crowds and the ensuing mortality which would result. The problem of how to deal with countless multitudes all ruthlessly set at whatever expense to life and limb, on seeing a real halo alive on a man’s head, and hearing the man’s head speak from the midst of it, occupied the headlines of the newspapers for weeks, even before Mr. Trimblerigg started on his voyage. And when he had started, then all the reporters of the American press chartered a ship and went out to meet him. It was then that Mr. Trimblerigg was asked the historic question what it felt like to be the greatest man in the world. And Mr. Trimblerigg answered that it made him feel shy; and the next moment could have bitten his tongue out for having fallen so easily into the first trap which an expert in publicity had set for him. It did not in the least really matter. It made good copy; and though it also made the judicious smile, the judicious--always an insignificant minority--in an affair conducted on so vast a scale did not count. ‘Trimblerigg charges that he is the greatest man alive,’ was an unfair way of putting it; but it could not be described as untrue. And so he just had to live it down. He did so without any difficulty. He was in a country where only the statue of Liberty shared the distinction that he carried about with him; and while her halo only shot out in separate rays from perforations concealed under her crown, his was a perfect round, it went out everywhere; it was also alight continuously day and night. The torchlight procession organized up Fifth Avenue to greet its arrival was thrown into the shade by its ever-increasing vitality. The torches were a foolish excrescence, they interested nobody; and though five miles of them impeded the distant view, the one central fact outshone them all.