A novice in the game
generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most
minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as
stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the
other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the
street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and
here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral
inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed
those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably
self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or
beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He never once thought it
probable, or possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter
immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best
preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.
"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and
discriminating ingenuity of D--; upon the fact that the document
must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good
purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that
it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary
search --the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this letter, the
Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient
of not attempting to conceal it at all.
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