friend Alpha. The letter was thus couched:

"My Dear Alpha,

"I have long wanted to tell you something, and now I have decided to
give vent to my desire. There are two ways of telling you. I might
take the circuitous route by roundabout and gentle phrases, through
hints and delicately undulating suggestions, and beneath the soft
shadow of flattering cajoleries. Or I might dash straight ahead. The
latter is the best, perhaps.

"You are a scoundrel, my dear Alpha. I say it in the friendliest and
most brutal manner. And you are not merely a scoundrel--you are the
most dangerous sort of scoundrel--the smiling, benevolent scoundrel.

"You know quite well that your house, with all that therein is, stands
on the edge of a precipice, and that at any moment a landslip might
topple it over into everlasting ruin. And yet you behave as though
your house was planted in the midst of a vast and secure plain,
sheltered from every imaginable havoc. I speak metaphorically, of
course. It is not a material precipice that your house stands on the
edge of; it is a metaphorical precipice. But the perils symbolized by
that precipice are real enough.

"It is, for example, a real chauffeur whose real wrist may by a single
false movement transform you from the incomparable Alpha into an item
in the books of the registrar of deaths. It is a real microbe who may
at this very instant be industriously planning your swift destruction.
And it is another real microbe who may have already made up his or her
mind that you shall finish your days helpless and incapable on the