Chapter VII: Part 7

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.

[10] I can almost say "sinecurely."

[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.

"The dome of the Capitol roars
With the shouts of the Caesars of crime"

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 _bete 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.

[11] Howes was riding on a burro.

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.

[12] Ezra Pound.

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 hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue."

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

"I ha' seen him eat o' the honey comb
Sin' they nailed him to the tree."

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.

[13] Albert Bierce.

I'm deep in work, and shall be for a few weeks; then I shall be off to Carmel for a lungful of sea air and a bellyful of abalones and mussels.

I suppose you'll be going to the Midsummer Jinks. Fail not to stop over here--I don't feel that I have really seen you yet.

With best regards to Carrie.

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[The Laguna Vista, Oakland, Sunday, July 24, 1910.]

DEAR GEORGE,

Supposing you to have gone home, I write to send the poem. Of course it is a good poem. But I begin to want to hear your larger voice again. I want to see you standing tall on the heights--above the flower-belt and the bird-belt. I want to hear,

"like Ocean on a western beach,
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey,"

as you _Odyssate_.

I _think_ I met that dog * * * to-day, and as it was a choice between kicking him and avoiding him I chose the more prudent course.

I've not seen your little sisters--they seem to have tired of me. Why not?--I have tired of myself.

Fail not to let me know when to expect you for the Guerneville trip. * * *

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[The Laguna Vista, October 20, 1910.]

I go back to the Inn on Saturday.

DEAR GEORGE,

It is long since I read the Book of Job, but if I thought it better than your addition to it I should not sleep until I had read it again--and again. Such a superb Who's Who in the Universe! Not a Homeric hero in the imminence of a personal encounter ever did so fine bragging. I hope you will let it into your next book, if only to show that the "inspired" scribes of the Old Testament are not immatchable by modern genius. You know the Jews regard them, not as prophets, in our sense, but merely as poets--and the Jews ought to know something of their own literature.

I fear I shall not be able to go to Carmel while you're a widow--I've tangled myself up with engagements again. Moreover, I'm just back from the St. Helena cemetery, and for a few days shall be too blue for companionship.

"Shifted" is better, I think (in poetry) than "joggled." You say you "don't like working." Then write a short story. That's work, but you'd like it--or so I think. Poetry is the highest of arts, but why be a specialist?

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., November 11, 1910.]

DEAR LORA,

It is nice to hear from you and learn that despite my rude and intolerant ways you manage to slip in a little affection for me--you and the rest of the folk. And really I think I left a little piece of my heart out there--mostly in Berkeley. It is funny, by the way, that in falling out of love with most of my old sweethearts and semi-sweethearts I should fall _in_ love with my own niece. It is positively scandalous!

I return Sloot's letter. It gave me a bit of a shock to have him say that he would probably never see me again. Of course that is true, but I had not thought of it just that way--had not permitted myself to, I suppose. And, after all, if things go as I'm hoping they will, Montesano will take me in again some day before he seems likely to leave it. We four may see the Grand Canyon together yet. I'd like to lay my bones thereabout.

The garments that you persuaded me were mine are not. They are probably Sterling's, and he has probably damned me for stealing them. I don't care; he has no right to dress like the "filthy rich." Hasn't he any "class consciousness"? However, I am going to send them back to you by express. I'll mail you the paid receipt; so don't pay the charge that the company is sure to make. They charged me again for the two packages that you paid for, and got away with the money from the Secretary of my club, where they were delivered. I had to get it back from the delivery man at the cannon's mouth--34 calibre.

With love to Carlt and Sloots,

Affectionately yours,
AMBROSE.

[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., November 14, 1910.]

DEAR LORA,

* * * * *

You asked me about the relative interest of Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. It is not easy to compare them, they are so different. In Yosemite only the magnitudes are unfamiliar; in the Canyon nothing is familiar--at least, nothing would be familiar to you, though I have seen something like it on the upper Yellowstone. The "color scheme" is astounding--almost incredible, as is the "architecture." As to magnitudes, Yosemite is nowhere. From points on the rim of the Canyon you can see fifty, maybe a hundred, miles of it. And it is never twice alike. Nobody can describe it. Of course you must see it sometime. I wish our Yosemite party could meet there, but probably we never will; it is a long way from here, and not quite next door to Berkeley and Carmel.

I've just got settled in my same old tenement house, the Olympia, but the club is my best address.

* * * * *

Affectionately,
AMBROSE.

[Washington, D. C., November 29, 1910.]

DEAR LORA,

Thank you very much for the work that you are doing for me in photography and china. I know it is great work. But take your time about it.

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving at Upshack. (That is my name for Sloots' place. It will be understood by anyone that has walked to it from Montesano, carrying a basket of grub on a hot day.)

I trust Sterling got his waistcoat and trousers in time to appear at his uncle's dinner in other outer garments than a steelpen coat. * * * I am glad you like (or like to have) the books. You would have had all my books when published if I had supposed that you cared for them, or even knew about them. I am now encouraged to hope that some day you and Carlt and Sloots may be given the light to see the truth at the heart of my "views" (which I have expounded for half a century) and will cease to ally yourselves with what is most hateful to me, socially and politically. I shall then feel (in my grave) that perhaps, after all, I knew how to write. Meantime, run after your false fool gods until you are tired; I shall not believe that your hearts are really in the chase, for they are pretty good hearts, and those of your gods are nests of nastiness and heavens of hate.

Now I feel better, and shall drink a toddy to the tardy time when those whom I love shall not think me a perverted intelligence; when they shall not affirm my intellect and despise its work--confess my superior understanding and condemn all its fundamental conclusions. Then we will be a happy family--you and Carlt in the flesh and Sloots and I in our bones.

* * * * *

My health is excellent in this other and better world than California.

God bless you.

AMBROSE.

[Washington, D. C., December 22, 1910.]

DEAR CARLT,

You had indeed "something worth writing about"--not only the effect of the impenitent mushroom, but the final and disastrous overthrow of that ancient superstition, Sloots' infallibility as a mushroomer. As I had expected to be at that dinner, I suppose I should think myself to have had "a narrow escape." Still, I wish I could have taken my chance with the rest of you.

How would you like three weeks of nipping cold weather, with a foot of snow? That's what has been going on here. Say, tell Sloots that the front footprints of a rabbit-track

are made by the animal's hind feet, straddling his forelegs. Could he have learned that important fact in California, except by hearsay? Observe (therefore) the superiority of this climate.

* * * * *

AMBROSE.

[Washington, D. C., January 26, 1911.]

DEAR LORA,

I have just received a very affectionate letter from * * * and now know that I did her an injustice in what I carelessly wrote to you about her incivility to me after I had left her. It is plain that she did not mean to be uncivil in what she wrote me on a postal card which I did not look at until I was in the train; she just "didn't know any better." So I have restored her to favor, and hope that you will consider my unkind remarks about her as unwritten. Guess I'm addicted to going off at half-cock anyhow.

Affectionately,
AMBROSE.

[Washington, D. C., February 3, 1911.]

DEAR LORA,

I have the Yosemite book, and Miss Christiansen has the Mandarin coat. I thank you very much. The pictures are beautiful, but of them all I prefer that of Nanny bending over the stove. True, the face is not visible, but it looks like you all over.

I'm filling out the book with views of the Grand Canyon, so as to have my scenic treasures all together. Also I'm trying to get for you a certain book of Canyon pictures, which I neglected to obtain when there. You will like it--if I get it.

Sometime when you have nothing better to do--don't be in a hurry about it--will you go out to Mountain View cemetery with your camera and take a picture of the grave of Elizabeth (Lily) Walsh, the little deaf mute that I told you of? I think the man in the office will locate it for you. It is in the Catholic part of the cemetery--St. Mary's. The name Lily Walsh is on the beveled top of the headstone which is shaped like this:

You remember I was going to take you there, but never found the time.

Miss Christiansen says she is writing, or has written you. I think the coat very pretty.

Affectionately,
AMBROSE.

[Washington, D. C., February 15, 1911.]

DEAR GEORGE,

As to the "form of address." A man passing another was halted by the words: "You dirty dog!" Turning to the speaker, he bowed coldly and said: "Smith is my name, sir." _My_ name is Bierce, and I find, on reflection, that I like best those who call me just that. If my christen name were George I'd want to be called _that_; but "Ambrose" is fit only for mouths of women--in which it sounds fairly well.

_How_ are you my master? I never read one of your poems without learning something, though not, alas, how to make one.

Don't worry about "Lilith"; it will work out all right. As to the characters not seeming alive, I've always fancied the men and women of antiquity--particularly the kings, and great ones generally--should not be too flesh-and-bloody, like the "persons whom one meets." A little coldness and strangeness is very becoming to them. I like them to _stalk_, like the ghosts that they are--our modern passioning seems a bit anachronous in them. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm sure you will understand and have some sympathy with the error.

Hudson Maxim takes medicine without biting the spoon. He had a dose from me and swallowed it smiling. I too gave him some citations of great poetry that is outside the confines of his "definition"--poetry in which are no tropes at all. He seems to lack the _feel_ of poetry. He even spoils some of the "great lines" by not including enough of the context. As to his "improvements," fancy his preference for "the fiercest spirit of _the warrior host_" to "the fiercest spirit _that fought in Heaven_"! O my!

Yes, Conrad told me the tale of his rescue by you. He gave me the impression of hanging in the sky above billows unthinkably huge and rocks inconceivably hard.

* * * * *

Of course I could not but be pleased by your inclusion of that sonnet on me in your book. And, by the way, I'm including in my tenth volume my _Cosmopolitan_ article on the "Wine" and my end of the controversy about it. All the volumes of the set are to be out by June, saith the publisher. He is certainly half-killing me with proofs--mountains of proofs! * * *

Yes, you'll doubtless have a recruit in Carlt for your Socialist menagerie--if he is not already a veteran exhibit. Your "party" is recruited from among sore-heads only. There are some twenty-five thousand of them (sore-heads) in this neck o' woods--all disloyal--all growling at the Government which feeds and clothes them twice as well as they could feed and clothe themselves in private employment. They move Heaven and Earth to get in, and they never resign--just "take it out" in abusing the Government. If I had my way nobody should remain in the civil service more than five years--at the end of that period all are disloyal. Not one of them cares a rap for the good of the service or the country--as we soldiers used to do on thirteen dollars a month (with starvation, disease and death thrown in). Their grievance is that the Government does not undertake to maintain them in the style to which they choose to accustom themselves. They fix their standard of living just a little higher than they can afford, and would do so no matter what salary they got, as all salary-persons invariably do. Then they damn their employer for not enabling them to live up to it.

If they can do better "outside" why don't they go outside and do so; if they can't (which means that they are getting more than they are worth) what are they complaining about?

What this country needs--what every country needs occasionally--is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends. Meantime, you socialers, anarchists and other sentimentaliters and futilitarians will find the civil-service your best recruiting ground, for it is the Land of Reasonless Discontent. I yearn for the strong-handed Dictator who will swat you all on the mouths o' you till you are "heard to cease." Until then--How? (drinking.)

Yours sincerely,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Washington, D. C., February 19, 1911.]

DEAR LORA,

Every evening coffee is made for me in my rooms, but I have not yet ventured to take it from _your_ cup for fear of an accident to the cup. Some of the women in this house are stark, staring mad about that cup and saucer, and the plate.

I am very sorry Carlt finds his position in the civil service so intolerable. If he can do better outside he should resign. If he can't, why, that means that the Government is doing better for him than he can do for himself, and you are not justified in your little tirade about the oppression of "the masses." "The masses" have been unprosperous from time immemorial, and always will be. A very simple way to escape that condition (and the _only_ way) is to elevate oneself out of that incapable class.

You write like an anarchist and say that if you were a man you'd _be_ one. I should be sorry to believe that, for I should lose a very charming niece, and you a most worthy uncle.

You say that Carlt and Grizzly are not Socialists. Does that mean that _they_ are anarchists? I draw the line at anarchists, and would put them all to death if I lawfully could.

But I fancy your intemperate words are just the babbling of a thoughtless girl. In any case you ought to know from my work in literature that I am not the person to whom to address them. I carry my convictions into my life and conduct, into my friendships, affections and all my relations with my fellow creatures. So I think it would be more considerate to leave out of your letters to _me_ some things that you may have in mind. Write them to others.

My own references to socialism, and the like, have been jocular--I did not think you perverted "enough to hurt," though I consider your intellectual environment a mighty bad one. As to such matters in future let us make a treaty of silence.

Affectionately,
AMBROSE.

[The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., March 1, 1911.]

MY DEAR RUTH,

It is pleasant to know that the family Robertson is "seeing things" and enjoying them. I hate travel, but find it delightful when done by you, instead of me. Believe me, I have had great pleasure in following you by your trail of words, as in the sport known as the "paper chase."

And now about the little story. Your refusal to let your father amend it is no doubt dreadfully insubordinate, but I brave his wrath by approval. It is _your_ work that I want to see, not anybody's else. I've a profound respect for your father's talent: as a literateur, he is the best physician that I know; but he must not be coaching my pupil, or he and I (as Mark Twain said of Mrs. Astor) "will have a falling out."

The story is not a story. It is not narrative, and nothing occurs. It is a record of mental mutations--of spiritual vicissitudes--states of mind. That is the most difficult thing that you could have attempted. It can be done acceptably by genius and the skill that comes of practice, as can anything. You are not quite equal to it--yet. You have done it better than I could have done it at your age, but not altogether well; as doubtless you did not expect to do it. It would be better to confine yourself at present to simple narrative. Write of something done, not of something thought and felt, except incidentally. I'm sure it is in you to do great work, but in this writing trade, as in other matters, excellence is to be attained no otherwise than by beginning at the beginning--the simple at first, then the complex and difficult. You can not go up a mountain by a leap at the peak.

I'm retaining your little sketch till your return, for you can do nothing with it--nor can I. If it had been written--preferably typewritten--with wide lines and margins I could do something _to_ it. Maybe when I get the time I shall; at present I am swamped with "proofs" and two volumes behind the printers. If I knew that I should _see_ you and talk it over I should rewrite it and (original in hand) point out the reasons for each alteration--you would see them quickly enough when shown. Maybe you will all come this way.

You are _very_ deficient in spelling. I hope that is not incurable, though some persons--clever ones, too--never do learn to spell correctly. You will have to learn it from your reading--noting carefully all but the most familiar words.

You have "pet" words--nearly all of us have. One of yours is "flickering." Addiction to certain words is an "upsetting sin" most difficult to overcome. Try to overcome it by cutting them out where they seem most felicitous.