writing. When two friends within hailing distance of each other get to
exchanging epistles in order to settle a serious difference of
opinion, the peril to their friendship is indeed grave; and the peril
is intensified when one of them has adopted a superior moral
attitude--as I had. The letters grow longer and longer, ruder and
ruder, and the probability of the friendship surviving grows ever
rapidly less and less. It is--usually, though not always--a mean act
to write what you have not the pluck to say.

So I just kept the letter as a specimen of what I could do--if I
chose--in the high role of candid friend.

I said to myself that I would take the first favourable occasion to
hint to Mr. Alpha how profoundly, etc., etc.

The occasion arrived sooner than I had feared. Alpha had an illness.
It was not alarming, and yet it was sufficiently formidable. It began
with colitis, and ended with appendicitis and an operation. Soon after
Alpha had risen from his bed and was cheerfully but somewhat feebly
about again I met him at a club. He was sitting in an arm-chair in one
of the huge bay-windows of the club, and gazing with bright interest
upon the varied spectacle of the street. The occasion was almost
ideal. I took the other arm-chair in the semicircle of the window. I
saw at once by his careless demeanour that his illness had taught him
nothing, and I determined with all my notorious tact and
persuasiveness to point a moral for him.

And just as I was clearing my throat to begin he exclaimed, with a
jerk of the elbow and a benevolently satiric smile: