He had concluded he wouldn't.

The village was full of it for several days, but Higgins did not suspect it.

I thought this was a fine opportunity.
I wrote an elaborately wretched account of the whole matter, and then illustrated it with villainous cuts engraved on the bottoms of wooden type with a jackknife--one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water with a walking-stick.

I thought it was desperately funny, and was densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a publication.

Being satisfied with this effort I looked around for other worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece of gratuitous rascality and "see him squirm." I did it, putting the article into the form of a parody on the "Burial of Sir John Moore"-- and a pretty crude parody it was, too.
Then I lampooned two prominent citizens outrageously--not because they had done anything to deserve, but merely because I thought it was my duty to make the paper lively.
Next I gently touched up the newest stranger--the lion of the day, the gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy.