Dear Subscriber: Several months ago, you accepted an offer to subscribe to our fine magazine. My records indicate, however, that you have yet to fulfill your financial obligation. I'm sure this is a simple oversight, but if you do not send your payment promptly, I will have no choice but to suspend your subscription. Won't you please mail your payment immediately? Your prompt attention to this matter is greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Everett R. Mersh Subscription Director

Dear Subscriber: Before you decided to subscribe to our prestigious publication, you may recall, we sent you an oversized package with many colorful pictures and quotations from famous people. Therein we flattered you. We described you as the sort of "thoughtful reader" who might enjoy our "provocative stories" and "poignant portraits." We said you were a person who "demanded more from a magazine," a person who appreciated "beauty and insight." We now believe this was a mistake. While our marketing research suggests that you are a member of a demographic group coveted by our advertisers and that you already subscribe to several similar (if inferior and not so prestigious) magazines, this obviously does not tell the whole story. Our research did not indicate, for example, that you are an obligation-flouting layabout bent on resisting all reasonable attempts to collect the amount you now owe. True, the amount is not large - just $12.95. But that kind of makes it worse, don't you think? Anyone might find himself unable to meet a commitment of $1000 or even $500. But stiffing an award-winning magazine for less than $13 sounds, frankly, like the behavior of a demented person, or maybe a drug addict. So won't you please mail your payment immediately? Your prompt attention to this matter is appreciated. Sincerely, Everett R. Mersh Subscription Director

Dear Drug Addict: Have you thought about seeking help? No, really. Perhaps you have a serious problem. Maybe you grew agile at shirking responsibility when you changed your name, moved out of state, and stopped paying child support. Or perhaps you have some expensive, "barely legal" sexual appetites the authorities might be interested in knowing about? This is the third letter you have received, still with no response. Why do you humiliate us so? And how can you bear to bring crushing shame upon yourself month after month by reading our critically acclaimed and internationally fêted magazine with not a thought in the world for paying for the edification and enjoyment you have received? Is this the example you wish to set for your children, should you ever see them again? Do you want them to reach adulthood with the atrophied sense of moral responsibility and comprehensive knowledge of illegal cable descrambling devices that now appears to be their birthright? Please mail your payment immediately. Your promptness is appreciated. Sincerely, Everett R. Mersh Subscription Director

Hey! Marquis De Sade: How are you sleeping? Are you sleeping the baby-like sleep familiar to paying readers of award-winning, critically acclaimed and internationally fêted magazines? I certainly hope not. Some pang of conscience would at least suggest there is a chance that you might one day join us here in the ranks of civil society. Frankly, we don't want your money, the money you took from those poor, doomed children of yours to finance your foul crusades against nature. The thought of you regarding our magazine with your bugged, addled eyes and dimpled, scabbed fists, month in and month out, turns our stomachs. I have a mind to terminate your subscription based solely on my unbounded disgust and my inability, from where I sit, to spit on you and your possessions. If you mail your payment immediately, however, I might reconsider. Please, in the name of all that is good and clean, take this opportunity to display some minimal humanity and unburden future generations of the damnable mark you have brought upon yourself and your descendants by mailing the small amount you owe us right away, you contemptible, depraved, foul monstrosity. Sincerely, Everett R. Mersh Subscription Director P.S. If you have already sent your payment, please disregard this notice. Our letters probably crossed in the mail.