The Letters of Ambrose Bierce (continued 3)

As to your queries. So far as I know, Realf did write his great sonnets on the night of his death. Anyhow, they were found with the body. Your recollection that I said they were written before he came to the Coast is faulty. Some of his other things were in print when he submitted them to me (and took pay for them) as new; but not the "De Mortuis."

I got the lines about the echoes (I think they go this way:

from a poem entitled, I think, "The Washers of the Shroud." I found it in the "Atlantic," in the summer of 1864, while at home from the war suffering from a wound, and—disgraceful fact!—have never seen nor heard of it since. If the magazine was a current number, as I suppose, it should be easy to find the poem. If you look it up tell me about it. I don't even know the author—had once a vague impression that it was Lowell but don't know.

The compound "mulolatry," which I made in "Ashes of the Beacon," would not, of course, be allowable in composition altogether serious. I used it because I could not at the moment think of the right word, "gyneolatry," or "gynecolatry," according as you make use of the nominative or the accusative. I once made "caniolatry" for a similar reason—just laziness. It's not nice to do things o' that kind, even in newspapers.

* * *

I had intended to write you something of "beesness," but time is up and it must wait. This letter is insupportably long already.

My love to Carrie and Katie. Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., May 16, 1905.

Dear George,

Bailey Millard is editor of "The Cosmopolitan Magazine," which Mr. Hearst has bought. I met him in New York two weeks ago. He had just arrived and learning from Hearst that I was in town looked me up. I had just recommended him to Hearst as editor. He had intended him for associate editor. I think that will give you a chance, such as it is. Millard dined with me and I told him the adventures of "A Wine of Wizardry." I shall send it to him as soon as he has warmed his seat, unless you would prefer to send it yourself. He already knows my whole good opinion of it, and he shares my good opinion of you.

I suppose you are at your new ranch, but I shall address this letter as usual.

* * *

If you hear of my drowning know that it is the natural (and desirable) result of the canoe habit. I've a dandy canoe and am tempting fate and alarming my friends by frequenting, not the margin of the upper river, but the broad reaches below town, where the wind has miles and miles of sweep and kicks up a most exhilarating combobbery. If I escape I'm going to send my boat up to Saybrook, Connecticut, and navigate Long Island Sound.

Are you near enough to the sea to do a bit of boating now and then? When I visit you I shall want to bring my canoe.

I've nearly given up my newspaper work, but shall do something each month for the Magazine. Have not done much yet—have not been in the mind. Death has been striking pretty close to me again, and you know how that upsets a fellow.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, June 16, 1905.

Dear George,

I'm your debtor for two good long letters. You err in thinking your letters, of whatever length and frequency, can be otherwise than delightful to me.

No, you had not before sent me Upton Sinclair's article explaining why American literature is "bourgeois." It is amusingly grotesque. The political and economical situation has about as much to do with it as have the direction of our rivers and the prevailing color of our hair. But it is of the nature of the faddist (and of all faddists the ultra socialist is the most untamed by sense) to see in everything his hobby, with its name writ large. He is the humorist of observers. When Sinclair transiently forgets his gospel of the impossible he can see well enough.

I note what you say of * * * and know that he did not use to like me, though I doubt if he ever had any antipathy to you. Six or eight years ago I tackled him on a particularly mean fling that he had made at me while I was absent from California. (I think I had not met him before.) I told him, rather coarsely, what I thought of the matter. He candidly confessed himself in the wrong, expressed regret and has ever since, so far as I know, been just and even generous to me. I think him sincere now, and enclose a letter which seems to show it. You may return it if you will—I send it mainly because it concerns your poem. The trouble—our trouble—with * * * is that he has voluntarily entered into slavery to the traditions and theories of the magazine trade, which, like those of all trades, are the product of small men. The big man makes his success by ignoring them. Your estimate of * * * I'm not disposed to quarrel with, but do think him pretty square.

* * *

Bless you, don't take the trouble to go through the Iliad and Odyssey to pick out the poetical parts. I grant you they are brief and infrequent—I mean in the translation. I hold, with Poe, that there are no long poems—only bursts of poetry in long spinnings of metrical prose. But even the "recitativo" of the translated Grecian poets has a charm to one that it may not have to another. I doubt if anyone who has always loved "the glory that was Greece"—who has been always in love with its jocund deities, and so forth, can say accurately just how much of his joy in Homer (for example) is due to love of poetry, and how much to a renewal of mental youth and young illusions. Some part of the delight that we get from verse defies analysis and classification. Only a man without a memory (and memories) could say just what pleased him in poetry and be sure that it was the poetry only. For example, I never read the opening lines of the Pope Iliad—and I don't need the book for much of the first few hundred, I guess—without seeming to be on a sunny green hill on a cold windy day, with the bluest of skies above me and billows of pasture below, running to a clean-cut horizon. There's nothing in the text warranting that illusion, which is nevertheless to me a part of the Iliad; a most charming part, too. It all comes of my having first read the thing under such conditions at the age of about ten. I remember that; but how many times I must be powerfully affected by the poets without remembering why. If a fellow could cut out all that extrinsic interest he would be a fool to do so. But he would be a better critic.

You ought to be happy in the contemplation of a natural, wholesome life at Carmel Bay—the "prospect pleases," surely. But I fear, I fear. Maybe you can get a newspaper connection that will bring you in a small income without compelling you to do violence to your literary conscience. I doubt if you can get your living out of the ground. But I shall watch the experiment with sympathetic interest, for it "appeals" to me. I'm a trifle jaded with age and the urban life, and maybe if you can succeed in that other sort of thing I could.

* * *

As to * * * the Superb. Isn't Sag Harbor somewhere near Saybrook, Connecticut, at the mouth of the river of that name? I'm going there for a month with Percival Pollard. Shall leave here about the first of July. If Sag Harbor is easily accessible from there, and * * * would care to see me, I'll go and call on her. * * * But maybe I'd fall in love with her and, being now (alas) eligible, just marry her alive!—or be turned down by her, to the unspeakable wrecking of my peace! I'm only a youth—63 on the 24th of this month—and it would be too bad if I got started wrong in life. But really I don't know about the good taste of being jocular about * * *. I'm sure she must be a serious enough maiden, with the sun of a declining race yellow on her hair. Eva Crawford thinks her most lovable—and Eva has a clear, considering eye upon you all.

* * *

I'm going to send up my canoe to Saybrook and challenge the rollers of the Sound. Don't you fear—I'm an expert canoeist from boyhood. * * *

Sincerely, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., December 3, 1905.

Dear George,

I have at last the letter that I was waiting for—didn't answer the other, for one of mine was on the way to you.

* * *

You need not worry yourself about your part of the business. You have acted "mighty white," as was to have been expected of you; and, caring little for any other feature of the matter, I'm grateful to you for giving my pessimism and growing disbelief in human disinterestedness a sound wholesome thwack on the mazzard.

* * *

Yes, I was sorry to whack London, for whom, in his character as author, I have a high admiration, and in that of publicist and reformer a deep contempt. Even if he had been a personal friend, I should have whacked him, and doubtless much harder. I'm not one of those who give their friends carte blanche to sin. If my friend dishonors himself he dishonors me; if he makes a fool of himself he makes a fool of me—which another cannot do.

* * *

Your description of your new environment, in your other letter, makes me "homesick" to see it. I cordially congratulate you and Mrs. Sterling on having the sense to do what I have always been too indolent to do—namely as you please. Guess I've been always too busy "warming both hands before the fire of life." And now, when

I find that the damned fire was in me and ought to have been quenched with a dash of cold sense. I'm having my canoe decked and yawl-rigged for deep water and live in the hope of being drowned according to the dictates of my conscience.

By way of proving my power of self-restraint I'm going to stop this screed with a whole page unused.

Sincerely yours, as ever, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., February 3, 1906.

Dear George,

I don't know why I've not written to you—that is, I don't know why God made me what I have the misfortune to be: a sufferer from procrastination.

* * *

I have read Mary Austin's book with unexpected interest. It is pleasing exceedingly. You may not know that I'm familiar with the kind of country she writes of, and reading the book was like traversing it again. But the best of her is her style. That is delicious. It has a slight "tang" of archaism—just enough to suggest "lucent sirups tinct with cinnamon," or the "spice and balm" of Miller's sea-winds. And what a knack at observation she has! Nothing escapes her eye. Tell me about her. What else has she written? What is she going to write? If she is still young she will do great work; if not—well, she has done it in that book. But she'll have to hammer and hammer again and again before the world will hear and heed.

As to me I'm pot-boiling. My stuff in the N. Y. American (I presume that the part of it that you see is in the Examiner) is mere piffle, written without effort, purpose or care. My department in the Cosmopolitan is a failure, as I told Millard it would be. It is impossible to write topical stuff for a magazine. How can one discuss with heart or inspiration a thing that happens two months or so before one's comments on it will be read? The venture and the title were Hearst's notion, but the title so handicaps me that I can do nothing right. I shall drop it.

I've done three little stories for the March number (they may be postponed) that are ghastly enough to make a pig squeal.

* * *

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., March 12, 1906.

My dear George,

First, about the "Wine," I dislike the "privately printed" racket. Can you let the matter wait a little longer? Neale has the poem, and Neale is just now inaccessible to letters, somewhere in the South in the interest of his magazine-that-is-to-be. I called when in New York, but he had flown and I've been unable to reach him; but he is due here on the 23rd. Then if his mag is going to hold fire, or if he doesn't want the poem for it, let Robertson or Josephare have a hack at it.

Barr is amusing. I don't care to have a copy of his remarks.

About the pirating of my stories. That is a matter for Chatto and Windus, who bought the English copyright of the book from which that one story came. I dare say, though, the publication was done by arrangement with them. Anyhow my interests are not involved.

I was greatly interested in your account of Mrs. Austin. She's a clever woman and should write a good novel—if there is such a thing as a good novel. I won't read novels.

Yes, the "Cosmopolitan" cat-story is Leigh's and is to be credited to him if ever published in covers. I fathered it as the only way to get it published at all. Of course I had to rewrite it; it was very crude and too horrible. A story may be terrible, but must not be horrible—there is a difference. I found the manuscript among his papers.

It is disagreeable to think of the estrangement between * * * and his family. Doubtless the trouble arises from his being married. Yes, it is funny, his taking his toddy along with you old soakers. I remember he used to kick at my having wine in camp and at your having a bottle hidden away in the bushes.

I had seen that group of you and Joaquin and Stoddard and laughed at your lifelike impersonation of the Drowsy Demon.

I passed the first half of last month in New York. Went there for a dinner and stayed to twelve. Sam Davis and Homer Davenport were of the party.

Sam was here for a few days—but maybe you don't know Sam. He's a brother to Bob, who swears you got your Dante-like solemnity of countenance by coming into his office when he was editing a newspaper.

You are not to think I have thrown * * * over. There are only two or three matters of seriousness between us and they cannot profitably be discussed in letters, so they must wait until he and I meet if we ever do. I shall mention them to no one else and I don't suppose he will to anyone but me. Apart from these—well, our correspondence was disagreeable, so the obvious thing to do was to put an end to it. To unlike a friend is not an easy thing to do, and I've not attempted to do it.

Of course I approve the new lines in the "Wine" and if Neale or anybody else will have the poem I shall insert them in their place. That "screaming thing" stays with one almost as does "the blue-eyed vampire," and is not only visible, as is she, but audible as well. If you go on adding lines to the poem I shall not so sharply deplore our failure to get it into print. As Mark Twain says: "Every time you draw you fill."

The "Night in Heaven" is fine work in the grand style and its swing is haunting when one gets it. I get a jolt or two in the reading, but I dare say you purposely contrived them and I can't say they hurt. Of course the rhythm recalls Kipling's "The Last Chanty" (I'm not sure I spell the word correctly—if there's a correct way) but that is nothing. Nobody has the copyright of any possible metre or rhythm in English prosody. It has been long since anybody was "first." When are you coming to Washington to sail in my canoe? Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., April 5, 1906.

Dear George,

I've been in New York again but am slowly recovering. I saw Neale. He assures me that the magazine will surely materialize about June, and he wants the poem, "A Wine of Wizardry," with an introduction by me. I think he means it; if so that will give it greater publicity than what you have in mind, even if the mag eventually fail. Magazines if well advertised usually sell several hundred thousand of the first issue; the trick is to keep them going. Munsey's "Scrap Book" disposed of a half-million. * * *

* * * was to start for a few weeks in California about now. I hope you will see him. He is not a bad lot when convinced that one respects him. He has been treated pretty badly in this neck o' the woods, as is every Western man who breaks into this realm of smugwumps.

My benediction upon Carmelites all and singular—if any are all.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Doubleday, Page & Co. are to publish my "Cynic's Dictionary."

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., April 20, 1906.

Dear George,

I write in the hope that you are alive and the fear that you are wrecked.[8]

Please let me know if I can help—I need not say how glad I shall be to do so. "Help" would go with this were I sure about you and the post-office. It's a mighty bad business and one does not need to own property out there to be "hit hard" by it. One needs only to have friends there.

We are helpless here, so far as the telegraph is concerned—shall not be able to get anything on the wires for many days, all private dispatches being refused.

Pray God you and yours may be all right. Of course anything that you may be able to tell me of my friends will be gratefully received.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., May 6, 1906.

Dear George,

Your letter relieves me greatly. I had begun to fear that you had "gone before." Thank you very much for your news of our friends. I had already heard from Eva Croffie. Also from Grizzly.

* * *

Thank you for Mr. Eddy's review of "Shapes." But he is misinformed about poor Flora Shearer. Of course I helped her—who would not help a good friend in adversity? But she went to Scotland to a brother long ago, and at this time I do not know if she is living or dead.

But here am I forgetting (momentarily) that awful wiping out of San Francisco. It "hit" me pretty hard in many ways—mostly indirectly, through my friends. I had rather hoped to have to "put up" for you and your gang, and am a trifle disappointed to know that you are all right—except the chimneys. I'm glad that tidal wave did not come, but don't you think you'd better have a canoe ready? You could keep it on your veranda stacked with provisions and whiskey.

My letter from Ursus (written during the conflagration) expresses a keen solicitude for the Farallones, as the fire was working westward.

If this letter is a little disconnected and incoherent know, O King, that I have just returned from a dinner in Atlantic City, N. J. I saw Markham there, also Bob Davis, Sam Moffett, Homer Davenport, Bob Mackay and other San Franciscans. (Can there be a San Franciscan when there is no San Francisco? I don't want to go back. Doubtless the new San Francisco—while it lasts—will be a finer town than the old, but it will not be my San Francisco and I don't want to see it. It has for many years been, to me, full of ghosts. Now it is itself a ghost.)

I return the sonnets. Destruction of "Town Talk" has doubtless saved you from having the one on me turned down. Dear old fellow, don't take the trouble to defend my memory when—or at least until—

I'm not letting my enemies' attitude trouble me at all. On the contrary, I'm rather sorry for them and their insomnia—lying awake o' nights to think out new and needful lies about me, while I sleep sweetly. O, it is all right, truly.

No, I never had any row (nor much acquaintance) with Mark Twain—met him but two or three times. Once with Stoddard in London. I think pretty well of him, but doubt if he cared for me and can't, at the moment, think of any reason why he should have cared for me.

"The Cynic's Dictionary" is a-printing. I shall have to call it something else, for the publishers tell me there is a "Cynic's Dictionary" already out. I dare say the author took more than my title—the stuff has been a rich mine for a plagiarist for many a year. They (the publishers) won't have "The Devil's Dictionary." Here in the East the Devil is a sacred personage (the Fourth Person of the Trinity, as an Irishman might say) and his name must not be taken in vain.

No, "The Testimony of the Suns" has not "palled" on me. I still read it and still think it one of the world's greatest poems.

* * *

Well, God be wi' ye and spare the shack at Carmel,

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., June 11, 1906.

Dear George,

Your poem, "A Dream of Fear" was so good before that it needed no improvement, though I'm glad to observe that you have "the passion for perfection." Sure—you shall have your word "colossal" applied to a thing of two dimensions, an you will.

I have no objection to the publication of that sonnet on me. It may give my enemies a transient feeling that is disagreeable, and if I can do that without taking any trouble in the matter myself it is worth doing. I think they must have renewed their activity, to have provoked you so—got up a new and fascinating lie, probably. Thank you for putting your good right leg into action themward.

What a "settlement" you have collected about you at Carmel! All manner of cranks and curios, to whom I feel myself drawn by affinity. Still I suppose I shall not go. I should have to see the new San Francisco—when it has foolishly been built—and I'd rather not. One does not care to look upon either the mutilated face of one's mashed friend or an upstart imposter bearing his name. No, my San Francisco is gone and I'll have no other.

* * *

You are wrong about Gorky—he has none of the "artist" in him. He is not only a peasant, but an anarchist and an advocate of assassination—by others; like most of his tribe, he doesn't care to take the risk himself. His "career" in this country has been that of a yellow dog. Hearst's newspapers and * * * are the only friends that remain to him of all those that acclaimed him when he landed. And all the sturdy lying of the former cannot rehabilitate him. It isn't merely the woman matter. You'd understand if you were on this side of the country. I was myself a dupe in the matter. He had expressed high admiration of my books (in an interview in Russia) and when his Government released him from prison I cabled him congratulations. O, my!

Yes, I've observed the obviously lying estimates of the San Franciscan dead; also that there was no earthquake—just a fire; also the determination to "beat" the insurance companies. Insurance is a hog game, and if they (the companies) can be beaten out of their dishonest gains by superior dishonesty I have no objection; but in my judgment they are neither legally nor morally liable for the half that is claimed of them. Those of them that took no earthquake risks don't owe a cent.

Please don't send * * *'s verses to me if you can decently decline. I should be sorry to find them bad, and my loathing of the Whitmaniacal "form" is as deep as yours. Perhaps I should find them good otherwise, but the probability is so small that I don't want to take the chance.

* * *

I've just finished reading the first proofs of "The Cynic's Word Book," which Doubleday, Page & Co. are to bring out in October. My dealings with them have been most pleasant and one of them whom I met the other day at Atlantic City seems a fine fellow.

I think I told you that S. O. Howes, of Galveston, Texas, is compiling a book of essays and sich from some of my stuff that I sent him. I've left the selection entirely to him and presented him with the profits if there be any. He'll probably not even find a publisher. He has the work about half done. By the way, he is an enthusiastic admirer of you. For that I like him, and for much else.

I mean to stay here all summer if I die for it, as I probably shall. Luck and love to you.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., June 20, 1906.

Dear Mr. Cahill,

I am more sorry than I can say to be unable to send you the copy of the Builder's Review that you kindly sent me. But before receiving your note I had, in my own interest, searched high and low for it, in vain. Somebody stole it from my table. I especially valued it after the catastrophe, but should have been doubly pleased to have it for you.

It was indeed a rough deal you San Franciscans got. I had always expected to go back to the good old town some day, but I have no desire to see the new town, if there is to be one. I fear the fire consumed even the ghosts that used to meet me at every street corner—ghosts of dear dead friends, oh, so many of them!

Please accept my sympathy for your losses. I too am a "sufferer," a whole edition of my latest book, plates and all, having gone up in smoke and many of my friends being now in the "dependent class." It hit us all pretty hard, I guess, wherever we happened to be.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C, August 11, 1906.

Dear George,

* * *

If your neighbor Carmelites are really "normal" and respectable I'm sorry for you. They will surely (remaining cold sober themselves) drive you to drink. Their sort affects me that way. God bless the crank and the curio!—what would life in this desert be without its mullahs and its dervishes? A matter of merchants and camel drivers—no one to laugh with and at.

Did you see Gorky's estimate of us in "Appleton's"? Having been a few weeks in the land, whose language he knows not a word of, he knows (by intuition of genius and a wee-bit help from Gaylord Wilshire and his gang) all about us, and tells it in generalities of vituperation as applicable to one country as to another. He's a dandy bomb-thrower, but he handles the stink-pot only indifferently well. He should write (for "The Cosmopolitan") on "The Treason of God."

Sorry you didn't like my remarks in that fool "symposium." If I said enough to make it clear that I don't care a damn for any of the matters touched upon, nor for the fellows who do care, I satisfied my wish. It was not intended to be an "argument" at all—at least not on my part; I don't argue with babes and sucklings. Hunter is a decentish fellow, for a dreamer, but the Hillquit person is a humorless anarchist. When I complimented him on the beauty of his neck and expressed the hope of putting a nice, new rope about it he nearly strangled on the brandy that I was putting down it at the hotel bar. And it wasn't with merriment. His anarchist sentiments were all cut out.

I'm not familiar with the poetry of William Vaughan Moody. Can you "put me on"?

I'm sending you an odd thing by Eugene Wood, of Niagara Falls, where I met him two or three years ago. I'm sure you will appreciate it. The poor chap died the other day and might appropriately—as he doubtless will—lie in a neglected grave. You may return the book when you have read it enough. I'm confident you never heard of it.

Enclosed is your sonnet, with a few suggestions of no importance. I had not space on it to say that the superfluity of superlatives noted, is accentuated by the words "west" and "quest" immediately following, making a lot of "ests." The verses are pleasing, but if any villain prefer them to "In Extremis" may he bite himself with a Snake!

If you'll send me that shuddery thing on Fear—with the "clangor of ascending chains" line—and one or two others that you'd care to have in a magazine, I'll try them on Maxwell. I suspect he will fall dead in the reading, or possibly dislocate the jaw of him with a yawn, but even so you will not have written in vain.

Have you tried anything on "Munsey"? Bob Davis is the editor, and we talked you over at dinner (where would you could have been). I think he values my judgment a little. * * *

I wish I could be blown upon by your Carmel sea-breeze; the weather here is wicked! I don't even canoe.

My "Cynic" book is due in October. Shall send it to you.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., September 28, 1906.

Dear George,

Both your letters at hand.

* * *

Be a "magazine poet" all you can—that is the shortest road to recognition, and all our greater poets have travelled it. You need not compromise with your conscience, however, by writing "magazine poetry." You couldn't.

What's your objection to * * *? I don't observe that it is greatly worse than others of its class. But a fellow who has for nigh upon twenty years written for yellow newspapers can't be expected to say much that's edifying on that subject. So I dare say I'm wrong in my advice about the kind of swine for your pearls. There are probably more than the two kinds of pigs—live ones and dead ones.

Yes, I'm a colonel—in Pennsylvania Avenue. In the neighborhood of my tenement I'm a Mister. At my club I'm a major—which is my real title by an act of Congress. I suppressed it in California, but couldn't here, where I run with the military gang.

You need not blackguard your poem, "A Visitor," though I could wish you had not chosen blank verse. That form seems to me suitable (in serious verse) only to lofty, not lowly, themes. Anyhow, I always expect something pretty high when I begin an unknown poem in blank. Moreover, it is not your best "medium." Your splendid poem, "Music," does not wholly commend itself to me for that reason. May I say that it is a little sing-songy—the lines monotonously alike in their caesural pauses and some of their other features?

By the way, I'd like to see what you could do in more unsimple meters than the ones that you handle so well. The wish came to me the other day in reading Lanier's "The Marshes of Glynn" and some of his other work. Lanier did not often equal his master, Swinburne, in getting the most out of the method, but he did well in the poem mentioned. Maybe you could manage the dangerous thing. It would be worth doing and is, therefore, worth trying.

Thank you for the Moody book, which I will return. He pleaseth me greatly and I could already fill pages with analyses of him for the reasons therefore. But for you to say that he has you "skinned"—that is magnanimity. An excellent thing in poets, I grant you, and a rare one. There is something about him and his book in the current "Atlantic," by May Sinclair, who, I dare say, has never heard of you. Unlike you, she thinks his dramatic work the best of what he does. I've not seen that. To be the best it must be mighty good.

Yes, poor White's poetry is all you say—and worse, but, faith! he "had it in him." What struck me was his candid apotheosis of piracy on the high seas. I'd hate the fellow who hadn't some sneaking sympathy with that—as Goethe confessed to some sympathy with every vice. Nobody'll ever hear of White, but (pray observe, ambitious bard!) he isn't caring. How wise are the dead!

* * *

My friend Howes, of Galveston, has, I think, nearly finished compiling his book of essaylets from my stuff. Neale has definitely decided to bring out "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter." He has the plates of my two luckless Putnam books, and is figuring on my "complete works," to be published by subscription. I doubt if he will undertake it right away.

Au reste, I'm in good health and am growing old not altogether disgracefully.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, October 30, 1906.

Dear George,

I'm pained by your comments on my book. I always feel that way when praised—"just plunged in a gulf of dark despair" to think that I took no more trouble to make the commendation truer. I shall try harder with the Howes book.

* * *

I can't supply the missing link between pages 101 and 102 of the "Word Book," having destroyed the copy and proofs. Supply it yourself.

You err: the book is getting me a little glory, but that will be all—it will have no sale, for it has no slang, no "dialect" and no grinning through a horse-collar. By the, way, please send me any "notices" of it that you may chance to see out there.

* * *

I've done a ghost story for the January "Cosmopolitan," which I think pretty well of. That's all I've done for more than two months.

I return your poem and the Moody book. Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, December 5, 1906.

Dear George,

Your letter of Nov. 28 has just come to my breakfast table. It is the better part of the repast.

* * *

No, my dictionary will not sell. I so assured the publishers.

I lunched with Neale the other day—he comes down here once a month. His magazine (I think he is to call it "The Southerner," or something like that) will not get out this month, as he expected it to. And for an ominous reason: He had relied largely on Southern writers, and finds that they can't write! He assures me that it will appear this winter and asked me not to withdraw your poem and my remarks on it unless you asked it. So I did not.

* * *

In your character of bookseller carrying a stock of my books you have a new interest. May Heaven promote you to publisher!

Thank you for the Moody books—which I'll return soon. "The Masque of Judgment" has some great work in its final pages—quite as great as anything in Faust. The passages that you marked are good too, but some of them barely miss being entirely satisfying. It would trouble you to find many such passages in the other book, which is, moreover, not distinguished for clarity. I found myself frequently prompted to ask the author: "What the devil are you driving at?"

I'm going to finish this letter at home where there is less talk of the relative military strength of Japan and San Francisco and the latter power's newest and most grievous affliction, Teddy Roosevelt.

Ambrose Bierce.

P.S. Guess the letter is finished.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., January 27, 1907.

Dear George,

I suppose I owe you letters and letters—but you don't particularly like to write letters yourself, so you'll understand.

* * *

Hanging before me is a water-color of a bit of Carmel Beach, by Chris Jorgensen, for which I blew in fifty dollars the other day. He had a fine exhibition of his Californian work here. I wanted to buy it all, but compromised with my desire by buying what I could. The picture has a sentimental value to me, apart from its artistic.

* * *

I am to see Neale in a few days and shall try to learn definitely when his magazine is to come out—if he knows. If he does not I'll withdraw your poem. Next month he is to republish "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter," with a new preface which somebody will not relish. I'll send you a copy. The Howes book is on its travels among the publishers, and so, doubtless, will long continue.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., February 5, 1907.

Dear George,

Our letters "crossed"—a thing that "happens" oftener than not in my correspondence, when neither person has written for a long time. I have drawn some interesting inferences from this fact, but have no time now to state them. Indeed, I have no time to do anything but send you the stuff on the battle of Shiloh concerning which you inquire.

I should write it a little differently now, but it may entertain you as it is.

* * *

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

* * *

Washington, February 21, 1907

My dear George,

If you desert Carmel I shall destroy my Jorgensen picture, build a bungalow in the Catskills and cut out California forever. (Those are the footprints of my damned canary, who will neither write himself nor let me write. Just now he is perched on my shoulder, awaiting the command to sing—then he will deafen me with a song without sense. O he's a poet all right.)

I entirely approve your allegiance to Mammon. If I'd had brains enough to make a decision like that I could now, at 65, have the leisure to make a good book or two before I go to the waste-dump. * * * Get yourself a fat bank account—there's no such friend as a bank account, and the greatest book is a check-book; "You may lay to that!" as one of Stevenson's pirates puts it.

* * *

No, sir, your boss will not bring you East next June; or if he does you will not come to Washington. How do I know? I don't know how I know, but concerning all (and they are many) who were to come from California to see me I have never once failed in my forecast of their coming or not coming. Even in the case of * * *, although I wrote to you, and to her, as if I expected her, I said to one of my friends: "She will not come." I don't think it's a gift of divination—it just happens, somehow. Yours is not a very good example, for you have not said you were coming, "sure."

So your colony of high-brows is re-establishing itself at the old stand—Piedmont. * * * But Piedmont—it must be in the heart of Oakland. I could no longer shoot rabbits in the gulch back of it and sleep under a tree to shoot more in the morning. Nor could I traverse that long ridge with various girls. I dare say there's a boulevard running the length of it,

If I could stop you from reading that volume of old "Argonauts" I'd do so, but I suppose an injunction would not "lie." Yes, I was a slovenly writer in those days, though enough better than my neighbors to have attracted my own attention. My knowledge of English was imperfect "a whole lot." Indeed, my intellectual status (whatever it may be, and God knows it's enough to make me blush) was of slow growth—as was my moral. I mean, I had not literary sincerity.

Yes, I wrote of Swinburne the distasteful words that you quote. But they were not altogether untrue. He used to set my teeth on edge—could not stand still a minute, and kept you looking for the string that worked his legs and arms. And he had a weak face that gave you the memory of chinlessness. But I have long renounced the views that I once held about his poetry—held, or thought I held. I don't remember, though, if it was as lately as '78 that I held them.

You write of Miss Dawson. Did she survive the 'quake? And do you know about her? Not a word of her has reached me. Notwithstanding your imported nightingale (upon which I think you should be made to pay a stiff duty) your Ina Coolbrith poem is so good that I want to keep it if you have another copy. I find no amendable faults in it. * * *

The fellow that told you that I was an editor of "The Cosmopolitan" has an impediment in his veracity. I simply write for it, * * *, and the less of my stuff the editor uses the better I'm pleased.

* * *

O, you ask about the "Ursus-Aborn-Gorgias-Agrestis-Polyglot" stuff. It was written by James F. ("Jimmie") Bowman—long dead. (See a pretty bad sonnet on page 94, "Shapes of Clay.") My only part in the matter was to suggest the papers and discuss them with him over many mugs of beer.

* * *

By the way, Neale says he gets almost enough inquiries for my books (from San Francisco) to justify him in republishing them.

* * *

That's all—and, as George Augustus Sala wrote of a chew of tobacco as the price of a certain lady's favors, "God knows it's enough!" Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., April 23, 1907.

Dear George,

I have your letter of the 13th. The enclosed slip from the Pacific Monthly (thank you for it) is amusing. Yes, * * * is an insufferable pedant, but I don't at all mind his pedantry. Any critic is welcome to whack me all he likes if he will append to his remarks (as * * * had the thoughtfulness to do) my definition of "Critic" from the "Word Book."

Please don't bother to write me when the spirit does not move you thereto. You and I don't need to write to each other for any other reason than that we want to. As to coming East, abstain, O, abstain from promises, lest you resemble all my other friends out there, who promise always and never come. It would be delightful to see you here, but I know how those things arrange themselves without reference to our desires. We do as we must, not as we will.

I think that uncle of yours must be a mighty fine fellow. Be good to him and don't kick at his service, even when you feel the chain. It beats poetry for nothing a year.

Did you get the "Shiloh" article? I sent it to you. I sent it also to Paul Elder & Co. (New York branch) for their book of "Western Classics," and hope it will meet their need. They wanted something, and it seemed to me as good, with a little revision, as any of my stuff that I control. Do you think it would be wise to offer them for republication "In the Midst of Life"? It is now "out of print" and on my hands.

* * *

I'm glad of your commendation of my "Cosmopolitan" stuff. They don't give me much of a "show"—the editor doesn't love me personally as he should, and lets me do only enough to avert from himself the attention of Mr. Hearst and that gentleman's interference with the mutual admiration game as played in the "Cosmopolitan" office. As I'm rather fond of light work I'm not shrieking.

* * *

You don't speak of getting the book that I sent, "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter"—new edition. 'Tisn't as good as the old. * * *

I'm boating again. How I should like to put out my prow on Monterey Bay.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., June 8, 1907.

Dear Lora,

Your letter, with the yerba buena and the spray of redwood, came like a breeze from the hills. And the photographs are most pleasing. I note that Sloot's moustache is decently white at last, as becomes a fellow of his years. I dare say his hair is white too, but I can't see under his hat. And I think he never removes it. That backyard of yours is a wonder, but I sadly miss the appropriate ash-heaps, tin cans, old packing-boxes, and so forth. And that palm in front of the house—gracious, how she's grown! Well, it has been more than a day growing, and I've not watched it attentively.

I hope you'll have a good time in Yosemite, but Sloots is an idiot not to go with you—nineteen days is as long as anybody would want to stay there.

I saw a little of Phyllis Partington in New York. She told me much of you and seems to be fond of you. That is very intelligent of her, don't you think?

No, I shall not wait until I'm rich before visiting you. I've no intention of being rich, but do mean to visit you—some day. Probably when Grizzly has visited me. Love to you all. Ambrose Bierce.

Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., June 25, 1907.

Dear George,

* * *

So * * * showed you his article on me. He showed it to me also, and some of it amused me mightily, though I didn't tell him so. That picture of me as a grouchy and disappointed old man occupying the entire cave of Adullam is particularly humorous, and so poetic that I would not for the world "cut it out." * * * seems incapable (like a good many others) of estimating success in other terms than those of popularity. He gives a rather better clew to his own character than to mine. The old man is fairly well pleased with the way that he has played the game, and with his share of the stakes, thank'ee.

I note with satisfaction your satisfaction with my article on you and your poem. I'll correct the quotation about the "timid sapphires"—don't know how I happened to leave out the best part of it. But I left out the line about "harlot's blood" because I didn't (and don't) think a magazine would "stand for it" if I called the editor's attention to it. You don't know what magazines are if you haven't tested them. However, I'll try it on Chamberlain if you like. And I'll put in "twilight of the year" too.

* * *

It's pleasing to know that you've "cut out" your clerical work if you can live without it. Now for some great poetry! Carmel has a fascination for me too—because of your letters. If I did not fear illness—a return of my old complaint—I'd set out for it at once. I've nothing to do that would prevent—about two day's work a month. But I'd never set foot in San Francisco. Of all the Sodoms and Gomorrahs in our modern world it is the worst. There are not ten righteous (and courageous) men there. It needs another quake, another whiff of fire, and—more than all else—a steady tradewind of grapeshot. When * * * gets done blackguarding New York (as it deserves) and has shaken the dung of San Francisco from his feet I'm going to "sick him onto" that moral penal colony of the world. * * *

I've two "books" seeking existence in New York—the Howes book and some satires. Guess they are cocks that will not fight.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

I was sixty-five yesterday.

Washington, D. C., July 11, 1907.

Dear George,

I've just finished reading proofs of my stuff about you and your poem. Chamberlain, as I apprised you, has it slated for September. But for that month also he has slated a longish spook story of mine, besides my regular stuff. Not seeing how he can run it all in one issue, I have asked him to run your poem (with my remarks) and hold the spook yarn till some other time. I hope he'll do so, but if he doesn't, don't think it my fault. An editor never does as one wants him to. I inserted in my article another quotation or two, and restored some lines that I had cut out of the quotations to save space.

It's grilling hot here—I envy you your Carmel.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C.

Dear George,

I guess several of your good letters are unanswered, as are many others of other correspondents. I've been gadding a good deal lately—to New York principally. When I want a royal good time I go to New York; and I get it.

* * *

As to Miller being "about the same age" as I, why, no. The rascal is long past seventy, although nine or ten years ago he wrote from Alaska that he was "in the middle fifties." I've known him for nearly thirty years and he can't fool me with his youthful airs and tales. May he live long and repent.

Thank you for taking the trouble to send Conan Doyle's opinion of me. No, it doesn't turn my head; I can show you dozens of "appreciations" from greater and more famous men. I return it to you corrected—as he really wrote it. Here it is:

"Praise from Sir Hugo is praise indeed." In "Through the Magic Door," an exceedingly able article on short stories that have interested him, Conan Doyle pays the following well-deserved tribute to Ambrose Bierce, whose wonderful short stories have so often been praised in these columns: "Talking of weird American stories, have you ever read any of the works of Ambrose Bierce? I have one of his books before me, 'In the Midst of Life.' This man (has) had a flavor quite his own, and (is)[9] was a great artist. It is not cheerful reading, but it leaves its mark upon you, and that is the proof of good work."

Thank you also for the Jacobs story, which I will read. As a humorist he is no great thing.

I've not read your Bohemian play to a finish yet, * * *. By the way, I've always wondered why they did not "put on" Comus. Properly done it would be great woodland stuff. Read it with a view to that and see if I'm not right. And then persuade them to "stage it" next year.

I'm being awfully pressed to return to California. No San Francisco for me, but Carmel sounds good. For about how much could I get ground and build a bungalow—for one? That's a pretty indefinite question; but then the will to go is a little hazy at present. It consists, as yet, only of the element of desire. * * *

The "Cosmopolitan," with your poem, has not come to hand but is nearly due—I'm a little impatient—eager to see the particular kind of outrage Chamberlain's artist has wrought upon it. He (C.) asked for your address the other day; so he will doubtless send you a check.

* * *

Now please go to work at "Lilith"; it's bound to be great stuff, for you'll have to imagine it all. I'm sorry that anybody ever invented Lilith; it makes her too much of an historical character.

* * *

"The other half of the Devil's Dictionary" is in the fluid state—not even liquid. And so, doubtless, it will remain.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., September 7, 1907.

My dear George,

I'm awfully glad that you don't mind Chamberlain's yellow nonsense in coupling Ella's name with yours. But when you read her natural opinion of your work you'll acquit her of complicity in the indignity. I'm sending a few things from Hearst's newspapers—written by the slangers, dialecters and platitudinarians of the staff, and by some of the swine among the readers.

Note the deliberate and repeated lying of Brisbane in quoting me as saying the "Wine" is "the greatest poem ever written in America." Note his dishonesty in confessing that he has commendatory letters, yet not publishing a single one of them. But the end is not yet—my inning is to come, in the magazine. Chamberlain (who professes an enthusiastic admiration of the poem) promises me a free hand in replying to these ignorant asses. If he does not give it to me I quit. I've writ a paragraph or two for the November number (too late now for the October) by way of warning them what they'll get when December comes. So you see you must patiently endure the befouling till then.

* * *

Did you notice in the last line of the "Wine" that I restored the word "smile" from your earlier draft of the verses? In one of your later (I don't remember if in the last) you had it "sigh." That was wrong; "smile" seems to me infinitely better as a definition of the poet's attitude toward his dreams. So, considering that I had a choice, I chose it. Hope you approve.

I am serious in wishing a place in Carmel as a port of refuge from the storms of age. I don't know that I shall ever live there, but should like to feel that I can if I want to. Next summer I hope to go out there and spy out the land, and if I then "have the price" (without sacrificing any of my favorite stocks) I shall buy. I don't care for the grub question—should like to try the simple life, for I have already two gouty finger points as a result of the other kind of life. (Of course if they all get that way I shan't mind, for I love uniformity.) Probably if I attempted to live in Carmel I should have asthma again, from which I have long been free.

* * *

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., October 9, 1907.

My dear Morrow,

Whether you "prosper" or not I'm glad you write instead of teaching. I have done a bit of teaching myself, but as the tuition was gratuitous I could pick my pupils; so it was a labor of love. I'm pretty well satisfied with the results.

No, I'm not "toiling" much now. I've written all I care to, and having a pretty easy berth (writing for The Cosmopolitan only, and having no connection with Mr. Hearst's newspapers) am content.

I have observed your story in Success, but as I never never (sic) read serials shall await its publication in covers before making a meal of it.

You seem to be living at the old place in Vallejo Street, so I judge that it was spared by the fire. I had some pretty good times in that house, not only with you and Mrs. Morrow (to whom my love, please) but with the dear Hogan girls. Poor Flodie! she is nearly a sole survivor now. I wonder if she ever thinks of us.

I hear from California frequently through a little group of interesting folk who foregather at Carmel—whither I shall perhaps stray some day and there leave my bones. Meantime, I am fairly happy here.

I wish you would add yourself to the Carmel crowd. You would be a congenial member of the gang and would find them worth while. You must know George Sterling: he is the high panjandrum and a gorgeously good fellow. Go get thee a bungalow at Carmel, which is indubitably the charmingest place in the State. As to San Francisco, with its labor-union government, its thieves and other impossibilities, I could not be drawn into it by a team of behemoths. But California—ah, I dare not permit myself to remember it. Yet this Eastern country is not without charm. And my health is good here, as it never was there. Nothing ails me but age, which brings its own cure.

God keep thee!—go and live at Carmel.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., October 29, 1907.

James D. Blake, Esq., Dear Sir:

It is a matter of no great importance to me, but the republication of the foolish books that you mention would not be agreeable to me. They have no kind of merit or interest. One of them, "The Fiend's Delight," was published against my protest; the utmost concession that the compiler and publisher (the late John Camden Hatten, London) would make was to let me edit his collection of my stuff and write a preface. You would pretty surely lose money on any of them.

If you care to republish anything of mine you would, I think, do better with "Black Beetles in Amber," or "Shapes of Clay." The former sold well, and the latter would, I think, have done equally well if the earthquake-and-fire had not destroyed it, including the plates. Nearly all of both books were sold in San Francisco, and the sold, as well as the unsold, copies—I mean the unsold copies of the latter—perished in the fire. There is much inquiry for them (mainly from those who lost them) and I am told that they bring fancy prices. You probably know about that better than I.

I should be glad to entertain proposals from you for their republication—in San Francisco—and should not be exacting as to royalties, and so forth.

But the other books are "youthful indiscretions" and are "better dead." Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., December 28,1907.

Dear George,

* * *

Please send me a copy of the new edition of "The Testimony." I borrowed one of the first edition to give away, and want to replace it. Did you add the "Wine" to it? I'd not leave off the indefinite article from the title of that; it seems to dignify the tipple by hinting that it was no ordinary tope. It may have been witch-fermented.

I don't "dislike" the line: "So terribly that brilliance shall enhance"; it seems merely less admirable than the others. Why didn't I tell you so? I could not tell you all I thought of the poem—for another example, how I loved the lines:

* * *

I'm returning you, under another cover (as the ceremonial slangers say) some letters that have come to me and that I have answered. I have a lot more, most of them abusive, I guess, that I'll dig out later. But the most pleasing ones I can't send, for I sent them to Brisbane on his promise to publish them, which the liar did not, nor has he had the decency to return them. I'm hardly sorry, for it gave me good reason to call him a peasant and a beast of the field. I'm always grateful for the chance to prod somebody.

* * *

I detest the "limited edition" and "autograph copies" plan of publication, but for the sake of Howes, who has done a tremendous lot of good work on my book, have assented to Blake's proposal in all things and hope to be able to laugh at this brilliant example of the "irony of fate." I've refused to profit in any way by the book. I want Howes to "break even" for his labor.

By the way, Pollard and I had a good time in Galveston, and on the way I took in some of my old battlefields. At Galveston they nearly killed me with hospitality—so nearly that Pollard fled. I returned via Key West and Florida.

You'll probably see Howes next Summer—I've persuaded him to go West and renounce the bookworm habit for some other folly. Be good to him; he is a capital fellow in his odd, amusing way.

I didn't know there was an American edition of "The Fiends' Delight." Who published it and when?

Congratulations on acceptance of "Tasso and Leonora." But I wouldn't do much in blank verse if I were you. It betrays you (somehow) into mere straightaway expression, and seems to repress in you the glorious abundance of imagery and metaphor that enriches your rhyme-work. This is not a criticism, particularly, of "Tasso," which is good enough for anybody, but—well, it's just so.

I'm not doing much. My stuff in the Cosmo. comes last, and when advertisements crowd some of it is left off. Most of it gets in later (for of course I don't replace it with more work) but it is sadly antiquated. My checks, though, are always up to date. Sincerely[10] yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., January 19, 1908.

My dear George,

I have just come upon a letter of yours that I got at Galveston and (I fear) did not acknowledge. But I've written you since, so I fancy all is well.

You mention that sonnet that Chamberlain asked for. You should not have let him have it—it was, as you say, the kind of stuff that magazines like. Nay, it was even better. But I wish you'd sent it elsewhere. You owed it to me not to let the Cosmopolitan's readers see anything of yours (for awhile, at least) that was less than great. Something as great as the sonnet that you sent to McClure's was what the circumstances called for.

"And strict concern of relativity"—O bother! that's not poetry. It's the slang of philosophy.

I am still awaiting my copy of the new "Testimony." That's why I'm scolding.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., April 18, 1908.

My dear Lora,

I'm an age acknowledging your letter; but then you'd have been an age writing it if you had not done it for "Sloots." And the other day I had one from him, written in his own improper person.

I think it abominable that he and Carlt have to work so hard—at their age—and I quite agree with George Sterling that Carlt ought to go to Carmel and grow potatoes. I'd like to do that myself, but for the fact that so many objectionable persons frequent the place: * * *, * * * and the like. I'm hoping, however, that the ocean will swallow * * * and be unable to throw him up.

I trust you'll let Sloots "retire" at seventy, which is really quite well along in life toward the years of discretion and the age of consent. But when he is retired I know that he will bury himself in the redwoods and never look upon the face of man again. That, too, I should rather like to do myself—for a few months.

I've laid out a lot of work for myself this season, and doubt if I shall get to California, as I had hoped. So I shall never, never see you. But you might send me a photograph.

God be with you. Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., July 11, 1908.

N.B. If you follow the pages you'll be able to make some sense of this screed.

My dear George,

I am sorry to learn that you have not been able to break your commercial chains, since you wish to, though I don't at all know that they are bad for you. I've railed at mine all my life, but don't remember that I ever made any good use of leisure when I had it—unless the mere "having a good time" is such. I remember once writing that one's career, or usefulness, was about ended when one thought less about how best to do his work than about the hardship of having to do it. I might have said the hardship of having so little leisure to do it. As I grow older I see more and more clearly the advantages of disadvantage, the splendid urge of adverse conditions, the uplifting effect of repression. And I'm ashamed to note how little I profited by them. I wasn't the right kind, that is all; but I indulge the hope that you are.

No I don't think it of any use, your trying to keep * * * and me friends. But don't let that interfere with your regard for him if you have it. We are not required to share one another's feelings in such matters. I should not expect you to like my friends nor hate my enemies if they seemed to you different from what they seem to me; nor would I necessarily follow your lead. For example, I loathe your friend * * * and expect his safe return because the ocean will refuse to swallow him.

* * *

I congratulate you on the Gilder acceptance of your sonnet, and on publication of the "Tasso to Leonora." I don't think it your best work by much—don't think any of your blank verse as good as most of your rhyme—but it's not a thing to need apology.

Certainly, I shall be pleased to see Hopper. Give me his address, and when I go to New York—this month or the next—I'll look him up. I think well of Hopper and trust that he will not turn out to be an 'ist of some kind, as most writers and artists do. That is because they are good feelers and poor thinkers. It is the emotional element in them, not the logical, that makes them writers and artists. They have, as a rule, sensibility and no sense. Except the big fellows.

* * *

Neale has in hand already three volumes of the "Collected Works," and will have two more in about a month; and all (I hope) this year. I'm revising all the stuff and cutting it about a good deal, taking from one book stuff for another, and so forth. If Neale gets enough subscriptions he will put out all the ten volumes next year; if not I shall probably not be "here" to see the final one issued.

* * *

Glad you think better of my part in the Hunter-Hillquit "symposium." I think I did very well considering, first, that I didn't care a damn about the matter; second, that I knew nothing of the men I was to meet, nor what we were to talk about, whereas they came cocked and primed for the fray; and, third, that the whole scheme was to make a Socialist holiday at my expense. Of all 'ists the Socialist is perhaps the damnedest fool for (in this country) he is merely the cat that pulls chestnuts from the fire for the Anarchist. His part of the business is to talk away the country's attention while the Anarchist places the bomb. In some countries Socialism is clean, but not in this. And everywhere the Socialist is a dreamer and futilitarian.

But I guess I'll call a halt on this letter, the product of an idle hour in garrulous old age.

* * *

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., August 7, 1908.

My dear Mr. Cahill,

Your note inquiring about "Ashes of the Beacon" interests me. You mention it as a "pamphlet." I have no knowledge of its having appeared otherwise than as an article in the Sunday edition of the "N. Y. American"—I do not recall the date. If it has been published as a pamphlet, or in any other form, separately—that is by itself—I should like "awfully" to know by whom, if you know.

I should be pleased to send it to you—in the "American"—if I had a copy of the issue containing it, but I have not. It will be included in Vol. I of my "Collected Works," to be published by the Neale Publishing Company, N. Y. That volume will be published probably early next year.

But the work is to be in ten or twelve costly volumes, and sold by subscription only. That buries it fathoms deep so far as the public is concerned.

Regretting my inability to assist you, I am sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., August 14, 1908.

Dear George,

I am amused by your attitude toward the spaced sonnet, and by the docility of Gilder. If I had been your editor I guess you'd have got back your sonnets. I never liked the space. If the work naturally divides itself into two parts, as it should, the space is needless; if not, it is worse than that. The space was the invention of printers of a comparatively recent period, neither Petrarch nor Dante (as Gilder points out) knew of it. Every magazine has its own system of printing, and Gilder's good-natured compliance with your wish, or rather demand, shows him to be a better fellow, though not a better poet, than I have thought him to be. As a victory of author over editor, the incident pleases.

I've not yet been in New York, but expect to go soon. I shall be glad to meet Hopper if he is there.

Thank you for the article from "Town Talk." It suggests this question: How many times, and covering a period of how many years, must one's unexplainable obscurity be pointed out to constitute fame? Not knowing, I am almost disposed to consider myself the most famous of authors. I have pretty nearly ceased to be "discovered," but my notoriety as an obscurian may be said to be worldwide and apparently everlasting.

The trouble, I fancy, is with our vocabulary—the lack of a word meaning something intermediate between "popular" and "obscure"—and the ignorance of writers as to the reading of readers. I seldom meet a person of education who is not acquainted with some of my work; my clipping bureau's bills were so heavy that I had to discontinue my patronage, and Blake tells me that he sells my books at one hundred dollars a set. Rather amusing all this to one so widely unknown.

I sometimes wonder what you think of Scheff's new book. Does it perform the promise of the others? In the dedicatory poem it seems to me that it does, and in some others. As a good Socialist you are bound to like that poem because of its political-economic-views. I like it despite them.

is great poetry, but it is not true. I am rather familiar with what goes on in the Capitol—not through the muck-rakers, who pass a few days here "investigating," and then look into their pockets and write, but through years of personal observation and personal acquaintance with the men observed. There are no Caesars of crime, but about a dozen rascals, all told, mostly very small fellows; I can name them all. They are without power or influence enough to count in the scheme of legislation. The really dangerous and mischievous chaps are the demagogues, friends of the pee-pul. And they do all the "shouting." Compared with the Congress of our forefathers, the Congress of to-day is as a flock of angels to an executive body of the Western Federation of Miners.

When I showed the "dome" to * * * (who had been reading his own magazine) the tears came into his voice, and I guess his eyes, as he lamented the decay of civic virtue, "the treason of the Senate," and the rest of it. He was so affected that I hastened to brace him up with whiskey. He, too, was "squirming" about "other persons' troubles," and with about as good reason as you.

I think "the present system" is not "frightful." It is all right—a natural outgrowth of human needs, limitations and capacities, instinct with possibilities of growth in goodness, elastic, and progressively better. Why don't you study humanity as you do the suns—not from the viewpoint of time, but from that of eternity. The middle ages were yesterday, Rome and Greece the day before. The individual man is nothing, as a single star is nothing. If this earth were to take fire you would smile to think how little it mattered in the scheme of the universe; all the wailing of the egoist mob would not affect you. Then why do you squirm at the minute catastrophe of a few thousands or millions of pismires crushed under the wheels of evolution. Must the new heavens and the new earth of prophecy and science come in your little instant of life in order that you may not go howling and damning with Jack London up and down the earth that we happen to have? Nay, nay, read history to get the long, large view—to learn to think in centuries and cycles. Keep your eyes off your neighbors and fix them on the nations. What poetry we shall have when you get, and give us, The Testimony of the Races!

* * *

I peg away at compilation and revision. I'm cutting-about my stuff a good deal—changing things from one book to another, adding, subtracting and dividing. Five volumes are ready, and Neale is engaged in a "prospectus" which he says will make me blush. I'll send it to you when he has it ready.

Gertrude Atherton is sending me picture-postals of Berchtesgaden and other scenes of "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter." She found all the places "exactly as described"—the lakes, mountains, St. Bartolomae, the cliff-meadow where the edelweiss grows, and so forth. The photographs are naturally very interesting to me.

Good night. Ambrose Bierce.

Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., September 12, 1908.

My dear Mr. Cahill,

Thank you for your good wishes for the "Collected Works"—an advertisement of which—with many blushes!—I enclose.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

P.S.—The "ad" is not sent in the hope that you will be so foolish as to subscribe—merely to "show" you. The "edition de luxe" business is not at all to my taste—I should prefer a popular edition at a possible price.

New York, November 6, 1908.

Dear George,

Your letter has just been forwarded from Washington. I'm here for a few days only—"few days and full of trouble," as the Scripture hath it. The "trouble" is mainly owling, dining and booze. I'll not attempt an answer to your letter till I get home.

* * *

I'm going to read Hopper's book, and if it doesn't show him to be a * * * or a * * * I'll call on him. If it does I won't. I'm getting pretty particular in my old age; the muck-rakers, blood-boilers and little brothers-of-the-bad are not congenial.

By the way, why do you speak of my "caning" you. I did not suppose that you had joined the innumerable caravan of those who find something sarcastic or malicious in my good natured raillery in careless controversy. If I choose to smile in ink at your inconsistency in weeping for the woes of individual "others"—meaning other humans—while you, of course, don't give a damn for the thousands of lives that you crush out every time you set down your foot, or eat a berry, why shouldn't I do so? One can't always remember to stick to trifles, even in writing a letter. Put on your skin, old man, I may want to poke about with my finger again.

* * *

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., December 11, 1908.

Dear George,

* * *

I'm still working at my book. Seven volumes are completed and I've read the proofs of Vol. I.

Your account of the "movement" to free the oppressed and downtrodden river from the tyranny of the sand-bar tickled me in my lonesome rib. Surely no colony of reformers ever engaged in a more characteristic crusade against the Established Order and Intolerable Conditions. I can almost hear you patting yourselves on your aching backs as you contemplated your encouraging success in beating Nature and promoting the Cause. I believe that if I'd been there my cold heart and indurated mind would have caught the contagion of the Great Reform. Anyhow, I should have appreciated the sunset which (characteristically) intervened in the interest of Things as They Are. I feel sure that whenever you Socialers shall have found a way to make the earth stop "turning over and over like a man in bed" (as Joaquin might say) you will accomplish all the reforms that you have at heart. All that you need is plenty of time—a few kalpas, more or less, of uninterrupted daylight. Meantime I await your new book with impatience and expectation.

I have photographs of my brother's shack in the redwoods and feel strongly drawn in that direction—since, as you fully infer, Carmel is barred. Probably, though, I shall continue in the complicated life of cities while I last.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., January 9, 1909.

Dear George,

I've been reading your book—re-reading most of it—"every little while." I don't know that it is better than your first, but to say that it is as good is praise enough. You know what I like most in it, but there are some things that you don't know I like. For an example, "Night in Heaven." It Kipples a bit, but it is great. But I'm not going to bore you with a catalogue of titles. The book is all good. No, not (in my judgment) all, for it contains lines and words that I found objectionable in the manuscript, and time has not reconciled me to them. Your retention of them, shows, however, that you agree with me in thinking that you have passed your 'prentice period and need no further criticism. So I welcome them.

I take it that the cover design is Scheff's—perhaps because it is so good, for the little cuss is clever that way.

* * *

I rather like your defence of Jack London—not that I think it valid, but because I like loyalty to a friend whom one does not believe to be bad. (The "thick-and-thin" loyalty never commended itself to me; it is too dog-like.) I fail, however, to catch the note of penitence in London's narratives of his underlife, and my charge of literary stealing was not based on his primeval man book, "Before Adam."

As to * * *, as he is not more than a long-range or short-acquaintance friend of yours, I'll say that I would not believe him under oath on his deathbed. * * * The truth is, none of these howlers knows the difference between a million and a thousand nor between truth and falsehood. I could give you instances of their lying about matters here at the capital that would make even your hair stand on end. It is not only that they are all liars—they are mere children; they don't know anything and don't care to, nor, for prosperity in their specialties, need to. Veracity would be a disqualification; if they confined themselves to facts they would not get a hearing. * * * is the nastiest futilitarian of the gang.

It is not the purpose of these gentlemen that I find so very objectionable, but the foul means that they employ to accomplish it. I would be a good deal of a Socialist myself if they had not made the word (and the thing) stink.

Don't imagine that I'll not "enter Carmel" if I come out there. I'll visit you till you're sick of me. But I'd not live there and be "identified" with it, as the newspapers would say. I'm warned by Hawthorne and Brook Farm.

I'm still working—a little more leisurely—on my books. But I begin to feel the call of New York on the tympani of my blood globules. I must go there occasionally, or I should die of intellectual torpor. * * * "O Lord how long?"—this letter. O well, you need not give it the slightest attention; there's nothing, I think, that requires a reply, nor merits one.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., March 6, 1909.

Dear George,

* * *

Did you see Markham's review of the "Wine" in "The N. Y. American"? Pretty fair, but—if a metrical composition full of poetry is not a poem what is it? And I wonder what he calls Kubla Khan, which has a beginning but neither middle nor end. And how about The Faerie Queene for absence of "unity"? Guess I'll ask him.

Isn't it funny what happens to critics who would mark out meters and bounds for the Muse—denying the name "poem," for example, to a work because it is not like some other work, or like one that is in the minds of them?

I hope you are prosperous and happy and that I shall sometimes hear from you.

Howes writes me that the "Lone Hand"—Sydney—has been commending you.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., October 9, 1909.

Dear George,

I return the poems with a few random comments and suggestions.

I'm a little alarmed lest you take too seriously my preference of your rhyme to your blank—especially when I recall your "Music" and "The Spirit of Beauty." Perhaps I should have said only that you are not so likely to write well in blank. (I think always of "Tasso to Leonora," which I cannot learn to like.) Doubtless I have too great fondness for great lines—your great lines—and they occur less frequently in your blank verse than in your rhyme—most frequently in your quatrains, those of sonnets included. Don't swear off blank—except as you do drink—but study it more. It's "an hellish thing."

It looks as if I might go to California sooner than I had intended. My health has been wretched all summer. I need a sea voyage—one via Panama would be just the thing. So if the cool weather of autumn do not restore me I shall not await spring here. But I'm already somewhat better. If I had been at sea I should have escaped the Cook-Peary controversy. We talk nothing but arctic matters here—I enclose my contribution to its horrors.

I'm getting many a good lambasting for my book of essays. Also a sop of honey now and then. It's all the same to me; I don't worry about what my contemporaries think of me. I made 'em think of you—that's glory enough for one. And the squirrels in the public parks think me the finest fellow in the world. They know what I have in every pocket. Critics don't know that—nor nearly so much.

Advice to a young author: Cultivate the good opinion of squirrels.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., November 1, 1909.

Dear George,

European criticism of your bête noir, old Leopold, is entitled to attention; American (of him or any other king) is not. It looks as if the wretch may be guilty of indifference.

In condemning as "revolutionary" the two-rhyme sestet, I think I could not have been altogether solemn, for (1) I'm something of a revolutionist myself regarding the sonnet, having frequently expressed the view that its accepted forms—even the number of lines—were purely arbitrary; (2) I find I've written several two-rhyme sestets myself, and (3), like yours, my ear has difficulty in catching the rhyme effect in a-b-c, a-b-c. The rhyme is delayed till the end of the fourth line—as it is in the quatrain (not of the sonnet) with unrhyming first and third lines—a form of which I think all my multitude of verse supplies no example. I confess, though, that I did not know that Petrarch had made so frequent use of the 2-rhyme sestet.

I learn a little all the time; some of my old notions of poetry seem to me now erroneous, even absurd. So I may have been at one time a stickler for the "regular" three-rhymer. Even now it pleases my ear well enow if the three are not so arranged as to elude it. I'm sorry if I misled you. You'd better 'fess up to your young friend, as I do to you—if I really was serious.

* * *

Of course I should be glad to see Dick, but don't expect to. They never come, and it has long been my habit to ignore every "declaration of intention."

I'm greatly pleased to know that you too like those lines of Markham that you quote from the "Wharf of Dreams." I've repeatedly told him that that sonnet was his greatest work, and those were its greatest lines. By the way, my young poet, Loveman, sends me a letter from Markham, asking for a poem or two for a book, "The Younger Choir," that he (M.) is editing. Loveman will be delighted by your good opinion of "Pierrot"—which still another magazine has returned to me. Guess I'll have to give it up.

I'm sending you a booklet on loose locutions. It is vilely gotten up—had to be so to sell for twenty-five cents, the price that I favored. I just noted down these things as I found them in my reading, or remembered them, until I had four hundred. Then I took about fifty from other books, and boiled down the needful damnation. Maybe I have done too much boiling down—making the stuff "thick and slab." If there is another edition I shall do a little bettering.

I should like some of those mussels, and, please God, shall help you cull them next summer. But the abalone—as a Christian comestible he is a stranger to me and the tooth o' me.

I think you have had some correspondence with my friend Howes of Galveston. Well, here he is "in his habit as he lives." Of the two figures in the picture Howes is the one on top.[11] Good night. A. B.

Washington, D. C., January 29, 1910.

Dear George,

Here are your fine verses—I have been too busy to write to you before. In truth, I've worked harder now for more than a year than I ever shall again—and the work will bring me nor gain nor glory. Well, I shall take a rest pretty soon, partly in California. I thank you for the picture card. I have succumbed to the post-card fashion myself.

As to some points in your letter.

I've no recollection of advising young authors to "leave all heart and sentiment out of their work." If I did the context would probably show that it was because their time might better be given to perfect themselves in form, against the day when their hearts would be less wild and their sentiments truer. You know it has always been my belief that one cannot be trusted to feel until one has learned to think—and few youngsters have learned to do that. Was it not Dr. Holmes who advised a young writer to cut out every passage that he thought particularly good? He'd be sure to think the beautiful and sentimental passages the best, would he not? * * *

If you mean to write really "vituperative" sonnets (why sonnets?) let me tell you one secret of success—name your victim and his offense. To do otherwise is to fire blank cartridges—to waste your words in air—to club a vacuum. At least your satire must be so personally applicable that there can be no mistake as to the victim's identity. Otherwise he is no victim—just a spectator like all others. And that brings us to Watson. His caddishness consisted, not in satirizing a woman, which is legitimate, but, first, in doing so without sufficient reason, and, second, in saying orally (on the safe side of the Atlantic) what he apparently did not dare say in the verses. * * *

I'm enclosing something that will tickle you I hope—"The Ballade of the Goodly Fere." The author's[12] father, who is something in the Mint in Philadelphia, sent me several of his son's poems that were not good; but at last came this—in manuscript, like the others. Before I could do anything with it—meanwhile wearing out the paper and the patience of my friends by reading it at them—the old man asked it back rather peremptorily. I reluctantly sent it, with a letter of high praise. The author had "placed" it in London, where it has made a heap of talk.

It has plenty of faults besides its monotonous rhyme scheme; but tell me what you think of it.

God willing, we shall eat Carmel mussels and abalones in May or June. Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., March 7, 1910.

Dear George,

My plan is to leave here before April first, pass a few days in New York and then sail for Colon. If I find the canal work on the Isthmus interesting I may skip a steamer from Panama to see it. I've no notion how long it will take to reach San Francisco, and know nothing of the steamers and their schedules on the Pacific side.

I shall of course want to see Grizzly first—that is to say, he will naturally expect me to. But if you can pull him down to Carmel about the time of my arrival (I shall write you the date of my sailing from New York) I would gladly come there. Carlt, whom I can see at once on arriving, can tell me where he (Grizzly) is. * * *

I don't think you rightly value "The Goodly Fere." Of course no ballad written to-day can be entirely good, for it must be an imitation; it is now an unnatural form, whereas it was once a natural one. We are no longer a primitive people, and a primitive people's forms and methods are not ours. Nevertheless, this seems to me an admirable ballad, as it is given a modern to write ballads. And I think you overlook the best line:

The poem is complete as I sent it, and I think it stops right where and as it should—

The current "Literary Digest" has some queer things about (and by) Pound, and "Current Literature" reprints the "Fere" with all the wrinkles ironed out of it—making a "capon priest" of it.

Fo' de Lawd's sake! don't apologise for not subscribing for my "Works." If you did subscribe I should suspect that you were "no friend o' mine"—it would remove you from that gang and put you in a class by yourself. Surely you can not think I care who buys or does not buy my books. The man who expects anything more than lip-service from his friends is a very young man. There are, for example, a half-dozen Californians (all loud admirers of Ambrose Bierce) editing magazines and newspapers here in the East. Every man Jack of them has turned me down. They will do everything for me but enable me to live. Friends be damned!—strangers are the chaps for me.

* * *

I've given away my beautiful sailing canoe and shall never again live a life on the ocean wave—unless you have boats at Carmel.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C., Easter Sunday.

Dear George,

Here's a letter from Loveman, with a kindly reference to you—that's why I send it.

I'm to pull out of here next Wednesday, the 30th, but don't know just when I shall sail from New York—apparently when there are no more dinners to eat in that town and no more friends to visit. May God in His infinite mercy lessen the number of both. I should get into your neck o' woods early in May. Till then God be with you instead. Ambrose Bierce.

Easter Sunday. [Why couldn't He stay put?]

Washington, D. C., March 29, 1910.

Dear George,

I'm "all packed up," even my pens; for to-morrow I go to New York—whence I shall write you before embarking.

Neale seems pleased by your "permission to print," as Congressmen say who can't make a speech yet want one in the Record, for home consumption.

Sincerely, Ambrose Bierce.

Guerneville, Cal., May 24, 1910.

Dear George,

You will probably have learned of my arrival—this is my first leisure to apprise you.

I took Carlt and Lora and came directly up here—where we all hope to see you before I see Carmel. Lora remains here for the week, perhaps longer, and Carlt is to come up again on Saturday. Of course you do not need an invitation to come whenever you feel like it.

I had a pleasant enough voyage and have pretty nearly got the "slosh" of the sea out of my ears and its heave out of my bones.

A bushel of letters awaits attention, besides a pair of lizards that I have undertaken to domesticate. So good morning.

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

The Key Route Inn, Oakland, June 25, 1910.

Dear George,

You'll observe that I acted on your suggestion, and am "here."

Your little sisters are most gracious to me, despite my candid confession that I extorted your note of introduction by violence and intimidation.

Baloo[13] and his cubs went on to Guerneville the day of their return from Carmel. But I saw them.