At the finish of the luncheon the painter, who had been meditative, suddenly raised his glass.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, with solemnity, “I beg to move that father be and hereby is a brick.”

“Carried nem. con.,” said the eldest son.

“Loud cheers!” said the more pert of the twins.

And Mr. Alpha was enchanted with his home and his home-life.

III

That luncheon was the latest and the most profound of a long series of impressions which had been influencing my mental attitude towards the excellent, the successful, the entirely agreeable Mr. Alpha.  I walked home, a distance of some three miles, and then I walked another three miles or so on the worn carpet of my study, and at last the cup of my feelings began to run over, and I sat down and wrote a letter to my 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 flat of your back.

“Suppose you to be dead—­what would happen?  You would leave debts, for, although you are solvent, you are only solvent because you have the knack of always putting your hand on money, and death would automatically make you insolvent.  You are one of those brave, jolly fellows who live up to their income.  It is true that, in deference to fashion, you are now insured, but for a trifling and inadequate sum which would not yield the hundredth