“Alpha, the man who cuts off another man’s hands is a ruffian.  The man who cuts off a woman’s hands is a scoundrel.  There is no excuse for him—­none whatever.  And the kinder he is the worse he is.  I repeat that you are the worst sort of scoundrel.  Your family mourns you, and every member of it says what an angel of a father you were.  But you were a scoundrel all the same.  And at heart every member of the family knows it and admits it.  Which is rather distressing.  And there are thousands just like you, Alpha.  Yes, even in England there are tens of thousands just like you....

“But you aren’t dead yet.  I was only asking you to conceive that you were.

“Believe me, my dear Alpha,

“Yours affectionately.”

A long and violent epistle perhaps.  You inquire in what spirit Alpha received it.  The truth is, he never did receive it.

IV

You naturally assume that before the letter could reach him Alpha had been mortally struck down by apoplexy, double pneumonia, bullet, automobile, or some such enemy of joy, and that all the dreadful things which I had foreseen might happen did in fact happen, thus proving once more what a very wise friend I was, and filling me with justifiable pride in my grief.  But it was not so.  Alpha was not struck down, nor did his agreeable house topple over the metaphorical precipice.  According to poetical justice he ought to have been struck down, just to serve him right, and as a warning to others—­only he was not.  Not merely the wicked, but the improvident and the negligent, often flourish like the green bay tree, and they keep on flourishing, and setting wisdom and righteousness at defiance in the most successful manner.  Which, indeed, makes the life of a philosopher and sagacious adviser extremely difficult and ungrateful.

Alpha never received my letter because I never sent it.  There are letters which one writes, not to send, but to ease one’s mind.  This letter was one of them.  It would not have been proper to dispatch such a letter.  Moreover, in the duties of friendship, as distinguished from the pleasures of friendship, speech is better, bolder, surer than 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.