ve trouble. The
anonymous writers who send me letters talk about bombs.

"Do you imagine because you murdered Vanya Tchernov in Philadelphia
the other day that you can frighten anybody dumb?

"I tell you you don't know what you're doing. You're dazed and scared
and bewildered by finding yourselves suddenly in the open world after
all those lurking years in hiding. As a forest wolf, his eyes dazzled
by the sun, runs blindly across a field of new mown hay, dodging where
there is nothing to dodge, leaping over shadows, so you, emerging from
darkness, start out across the fertile world, the sun of civilisation
blinding you so that you run as though stupefied and frightened,
shying at straws, dodging zephyrs, leaping a pool of dew as though it
were the Volga.

"What are you afraid of? You have nothing to fear except yourselves
out here in the sunny open!

"Behold your enemies--yourselves!--selfish, defiant, full of false
council, of envy, of cowardice, of treachery.

"For there would be no sorrow, no injustice in the world if
we--each one of us--were true to our better selves! You know it! You
can not come out of darkness and range the open world like wolves!
Civilisation will kill you!

"But you can come out of your long twilight bearing yourselves like
men--and find, by God's grace, that you _are_ men!--that you are
fashioned like other men to stand upright in the light without
blinking and slinking and dodging into cover.

"For the haymakers will not climb and stone you; the herds will not
stampede; no watch-dogs of civilisation will attack you if you come
out into the fields looking like men, behaving like men, asking to
share the world's burdens like men, and like men giving brain and
brawn to make more pleasant and secure the only spot in the solar
system dedicated by the Most High to the development of mankind!"

There was a dead silence in the place.

Palla slowly lifted her head and raised her right hand.

"I desire," she said in a low, grave voice, "to acknowledge here my
belief in law, in order, and in a divine, creative, and responsible
wisdom. And in ultimate continuation."

She turned away as a demonstration began, and Jim saw her putting on
her coat. There was some scattering applause, but considerable
disorder where men in the audience began to harangue each other and
shake dirty fingers under one another's noses. Two personal encounters
and one hair-pulling were checked by bored policemen: a gi