Chapter IV: Part 4

Why, of course my remarks about * * * were facetious--playful. She really is an anarchist, and her sympathies are with criminals, whom she considers the "product" of the laws, but--well, she inherited the diathesis and can no more help it than she can the color of her pretty eyes. But she is a child--and except in so far as her convictions make her impossible they do not count. She would not hurt a fly--not even if, like the toad, it had a precious jewel in its head that it did not work for. But I am speaking of the * * * that _I_ knew. If I did not know that the anarchist leopard's spots "will wash," your words would make me think that she might have changed. It does not matter what women think, if thinking it may be called, and * * * will never be other than lovable.

Lest you have _not_ a copy of the verses addressed to me I enclose one that I made myself. Of course their publication could not be otherwise than pleasing to me if you care to do it. You need not fear the "splendid weight" expression, and so forth--there is nothing "conceited" in the poem. As it was addressed to me, I have not criticised it--I _can't_. And I guess it needs no criticism.

I fear for the other two-thirds of this latest poem. If you descend from Arcturus to Earth, from your nebulae to your neighbors, from Life to lives, from the measureless immensities of space to the petty passions of us poor insects, won't you incur the peril of anti-climax? I doubt if you can touch the "human interest" after those high themes without an awful tumble. I should be sorry to see the poem "peter out," or "soak in." It would be as if Goethe had let his "Prologue in Heaven" expire in a coon song. You have reached the "heights of dream" all right, but how are you to stay there to the end? By the way, you must perfect yourself in Astronomy, or rather get a general knowledge of it, which I fear you lack. Be sure about the pronunciation of astronomical names.

I have read some of Jack London's work and think it clever. Of Whitaker I never before heard, I fear. If London wants to criticise your "Star poem" what's the objection? I should not think, though, from his eulogism of * * *, that he is very critical. * * *

Where are you to place Browning? Among thinkers. In his younger days, when he wrote in English, he stood among the poets. I remember writing once--of the thinker: "There's nothing more obscure than Browning except blacking." I'll stand to that.

No, don't take the trouble to send me a copy of these verses: I expect to see them in a book pretty soon. * * *

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[The Olympia, Washington, D. C., March 31, 1902.]

DEAR STERLING,

I am glad to know that you too have a good opinion of that poem.[6] One should know about one's own work. Most writers think their work good, but good writers know it. Pardon me if I underrated your astronomical knowledge. My belief was based on your use of those names. I never met with the spelling "Betelgeux"; and even if it is correct and picturesque I'd not use it if I were you, for it does not quite speak itself, and you can't afford to jolt the reader's attention from your thought to a matter of pronunciation. In my student days we, I am sure, were taught to say Procy'on. I don't think I've heard it pronounced since, and I've no authority at hand. If you are satisfied with Pro'cyon I suppose it is that. But your pronunciation was Aldeb'aran or your meter very crazy indeed. I asked (with an interrogation point) if it were not Aldeba'ran--and I think it is. Fomalhaut I don't know about; I thought it French and masculine. In that case it would, I suppose, be "ho," not "hote."

[6] "The Testimony of the Suns."

Don't cut out that stanza, even if "clime" doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with duration. The stanza is good enough to stand a blemish.

"Ye stand rebuked by suns who claim"--I was wrong in substituting "that" for "who," not observing that it would make it ambiguous. I merely yielded to a favorite impulse: to say "that" instead of "who," and did not count the cost.

Don't cut out _any_ stanza--if you can't perfect them let them go imperfect.

"Without or genesis or end."
"Devoid of birth, devoid of end."

These are not so good as

"Without beginning, without end";--I submit them to suggest a way to overcome that identical rhyme. All you have to do is get rid of the second "without." I should not like "impend."

Yes, I vote for Orion's _sword_ of suns. "Cimetar" sounds better, but it is more specific--less generic. It is modern--or, rather, less ancient than "sword," and makes one think of Turkey and the Holy Land. But "sword"--there were swords before Homer. And I don't think the man who named this constellation ever saw a curved blade. And yet, and yet--"cimetar of suns" is "mighty catchin'."

No, indeed, I could not object to your considering the heavens in a state of war. I have sometimes fancied I could hear the rush and roar of it. Why, a few months ago I began a sonnet thus:

"Not as two erring spheres together grind,
With monstrous ruin, in the vast of space,
Destruction born of that malign embrace--
Their hapless peoples all to death consigned--" etc.

I've been a star-gazer all my life--from my habit of being "out late," I guess; and the things have always seemed to me _alive_.

The change in the verses _ad meum_, from "_thy_ clearer light" to "_the_ clearer light" may have been made modestly or inadvertently--I don't recollect. It is, of course, no improvement and you may do as you please. I'm uniformly inadvertent, but intermittently modest.

* * * * *

A class of stuff that I can't (without "trouble in the office") write my own way I will not write at all. So I'm writing very little of anything but nonsense. * * *

With best regards to Mrs. Sterling and Miss Marian I am

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

Leigh died a year ago this morning. I wish I could stop counting the days.

[The Olympia, Washington, D. C., April 15, 1902.]

DEAR STERLING,

All right--I only wanted you to be _sure_ about those names of stars; it would never do to be less than sure.

After all our talk (made by me) I guess that stanza would better stand as first written. "Clime"--climate--connotes temperature, weather, and so forth, in ordinary speech, but a poet may make his own definitions, I suppose, and compel the reader to study them out and accept them.

Your misgiving regarding your inability to reach so high a plane again as in this poem is amusing, but has an element of the pathetic. It certainly is a misfortune for a writer to do his _best_ work early; but I fancy you'd better trust your genius and do its bidding whenever the monkey chooses to bite. "The Lord will provide." Of course you have read Stockton's story "His Wife's Deceased Sister." But Stockton gets on very well, despite "The Lady or the Tiger." I've a notion that you'll find other tragedies among the stars if earth doesn't supply you with high enough themes.

Will I write a preface for the book? Why, yes, if you think me competent. Emerson commands us to "hitch our wagon to a star?" and, egad! here's a whole constellation--a universe--of stars to draw mine! It makes me blink to think of it.

O yes, I'd like well enough to "leave the Journal," but--

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[The Olympia, Washington, D. C., July 10, 1902.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

If rejection wounded, all writers would bleed at every pore. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. Of course I shall be glad to go over your entire body of work again and make suggestions if any occur to me. It will be no trouble--I could not be more profitably employed than in critically reading you, nor more agreeably.

* * * * *

Of course your star poem has one defect--if it is a defect--that limits the circle of understanding and admiring readers--its lack of "_human_ interest." We human insects, as a rule, care for nothing but ourselves, and think that is best which most closely touches such emotions and sentiments as grow out of our relations, the one with another. I don't share the preference, and a few others do not, believing that there are things more interesting than men and women. The Heavens, for example. But who knows, or cares anything about them--even knows the name of a single constellation? Hardly any one but the professional astronomers--and there are not enough of them to buy your books and give you fame. I should be sorry not to have that poem published--sorry if you did not write more of the kind. But while it may impress and dazzle "the many" it will not win them. They want you to finger their heart-strings and pull the cord that works their arms and legs. So you must finger and pull--too.

The Chateau Yquem came all right, and is good. Thank you for it--albeit I'm sorry you feel that you must do things like that. It is very conventional and, I fear, "proper." However, I remember that you used to do so when you could not by any stretch of imagination have felt that you were under an "obligation." So I guess it is all right--just your way of reminding me of the old days. Anyhow, the wine is so much better than my own that I've never a scruple when drinking it.

Has "Maid Marian" a photograph of me?--I don't remember. If not I'll send her one; I've just had some printed from a negative five or six years old. I've renounced the photograph habit, as one renounces other habits when age has made them ridiculous--or impossible.

Send me the typewritten book when you have it complete.

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Washington, August 19, 1902.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I suppose you are in Seattle, but this letter will keep till your return.

I am delighted to know that I am to have "the book" so soon, and will give it my best attention and (if you still desire) some prefatory lines. Think out a good title and I shall myself be hospitable to any suggestion of my daemon in the matter. He has given me nothing for the star poem yet.

* * * * *

You'll "learn in suffering what you teach in song," all right; but let us hope the song will be the richer for it. It _will_ be. For that reason I never altogether "pity the sorrows" of a writer--knowing they are good for him. He needs them in his business. I suspect you must have shed a tear or two since I knew you.

I'm sending you a photograph, but you did not tell me if Maid Marian the Superb already has one--that's what I asked you, and if you don't answer I shall ask her.

* * * * *

Yes, I am fairly well, and, though not "happy," content. But I'm dreadfully sorry about Peterson.

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

I am about to break up my present establishment and don't know where my next will be. Better address me "Care N. Y. American and Journal Bureau, Washington, D. C."

You see I'm still chained to the oar of yellow journalism, but it is a rather light servitude.

[Address me at 1321 Yale Street, Washington, D. C., December 20, 1902.]

DEAR STERLING,

I fancy you must fear by this time that I did not get the poems, but I did. I'll get at them, doubtless, after awhile, though a good deal of manuscript--including a couple of novels!--is ahead of them; and one published book of bad poems awaits a particular condemnation.

I'm a little embarrassed about the preface which I'm to write. I fear you must forego the preface or I the dedication. That kind of "cooperation" doesn't seem in very good taste: it smacks of "mutual admiration" in the bad sense, and the reviewers would probably call it "log-rolling." Of course it doesn't matter too much what the reviewers say, but it matters a lot what the intelligent readers think; and your book will have no others. I really shouldn't like to write the preface of a book dedicated to me, though I did not think of that at first.

The difficulty could be easily removed by _not_ dedicating the book to me were it not that that would sacrifice the noble poem with my name atop of it. That poem is itself sufficiently dedicatory if printed by itself in the forepages of the book and labeled "Dedication--To Ambrose Bierce." I'm sure that vanity has nothing to do, or little to do, with my good opinion of the verses. And, after all, they _show_ that I have said _to you_ all that I could say to the reader in your praise and encouragement. What do you think?

As to dedicating individual poems to other fellows, I have not the slightest hesitancy in advising you against it. The practice smacks of the amateur and is never, I think, pleasing to anybody but the person so honored. The custom has fallen into "innocuous desuetude" and there appears to be no call for its revival. Pay off your obligations (if such there be) otherwise. You may put it this way if you like: The whole book being dedicated to me, no part of it _can_ be dedicated to another. Or this way: Secure in my exalted position I don't purpose sharing the throne with rival (and inferior) claimants. They be gam doodled!

Seriously--but I guess it is serious enough as it stands. It occurs to me that in saying: "no part of it _can_ be dedicated to another" I might be understood as meaning: "no part of it _must_ be," etc. No; I mean only that the dedication to another would contradict the dedication to me. The two things are (as a matter of fact) incompatible.

Well, if you think a short preface by me preferable to the verses with my name, all right; I will cheerfully write it, and that will leave you free to honor your other friends if you care to. But those are great lines, and implying, as they do, all that a set preface could say, it seems to me that they ought to stand.

* * * * *

Maid Marian shall have the photograph.

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[1321 Yale Street, Washington, D. C., March 1, 1903.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

You are a brick. You shall do as you will. My chief reluctance is that if it become known, or _when_ it becomes known, there may ensue a suspicion of my honesty in praising you and _your_ book; for critics and readers are not likely to look into the matter of dates. For your sake I should be sorry to have it thought that my commendation was only a log-rolling incident; for myself, I should care nothing about it. This eel is accustomed to skinning.

It is not the least pleasing of my reflections that my friends have always liked my work--or me--well enough to want to publish my books at their own expense. Everything that I have written could go to the public that way if I would consent. In the two instances in which I did consent they got their money back all right, and I do not doubt that it will be so in this; for if I did not think there was at least a little profit in a book of mine I should not offer it to a publisher. "Shapes of Clay" _ought_ to be published in California, and it would have been long ago if I had not been so lazy and so indisposed to dicker with the publishers. Properly advertised--which no book of mine ever has been--it should sell there if nowhere else. Why, then, do _I_ not put up the money? Well, for one reason, I've none to put up. Do you care for the other reasons?

But I must make this a condition. If there is a loss, _I_ am to bear it. To that end I shall expect an exact accounting from your Mr. Wood, and the percentage that Scheff. purposes having him pay to me is to go to you. The copyright is to be mine, but nothing else until you are entirely recouped. But all this I will arrange with Scheff., who, I take it, is to attend to the business end of the matter, with, of course, your assent to the arrangements that he makes.

I shall write Scheff. to-day to go ahead and make his contract with Mr. Wood on these lines. Scheff. appears not to know who the "angel" in the case is, and he need not, unless, or until, you want him to.

I've a pretty letter from Maid Marian in acknowledgment of the photograph. I shall send one to Mrs. Sterling at once, in the sure and certain hope of getting another. It is good of her to remember my existence, considering that your scoundrelly monopoly of her permitted us to meet so seldom. I go in for a heavy tax on married men who live with their wives.

"She holds no truce with Death _or_ Peace" means that with _one_ of them she holds no truce; "nor" makes it mean that she holds no truce with _either_. The misuse of "or" (its use to mean "nor") is nearly everybody's upsetting sin. So common is it that "nor" instead usually sounds harsh.

I omitted the verses on "Puck," not because Bunner is dead, but because his work is dead too, and the verses appear to lack intrinsic merit to stand alone. I shall perhaps omit a few more when I get the proofs (I wish you could see the bushels I've left out already) and add a few serious ones.

I'm glad no end that you and Scheff. have met. I'm fond of the boy and he likes me, I think. He too has a book of verses on the ways, and I hope for it a successful launching. I've been through it all; some of it is great in the matter of thews and brawn; some fine.

Pardon the typewriter; I wanted a copy of this letter.

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[The New York "American" Bureau, Washington, D. C., June 13, 1903.]

DEAR STERLING,

It is good to hear from you again and to know that the book is so nearly complete as to be in the hands of the publishers. I dare say they will not have it, and you'll have to get it out at your own expense. When it comes to that I shall hope to be of service to you, as you have been to me.

So you like Scheff. Yes, he is a good boy and a good friend. I wish you had met our friend Dr. Doyle, who has now gone the long, lone journey. It has made a difference to me, but that matters little, for the time is short in which to grieve. I shall soon be going his way.

No, I shall not put anything about the * * * person into "Shapes of Clay." His offence demands another kind of punishment, and until I meet him he goes unpunished. I once went to San Francisco to punish him (but that was in hot blood) but * * * of "The Wave" told me the man was a hopeless invalid, suffering from locomotor ataxia. I have always believed that until I got your letter and one from Scheff. Is it not so?--or _was_ it not? If not he has good reason to think me a coward, for his offence was what men are killed for; but of course one does not kill a helpless person, no matter what the offence is. If * * * lied to me I am most anxious to know it; he has always professed himself a devoted friend.

The passage that you quote from Jack London strikes me as good. I don't dislike the word "penetrate"--rather like it. It is in frequent use regarding exploration and discovery. But I think you right about "rippling"; it is too lively a word to be outfitted with such an adjective as "melancholy." I see London has an excellent article in "The Critic" on "The Terrible and Tragic in Fiction." He knows how to think a bit.

What do I think of Cowley-Brown and his "Goosequill"? I did not know that he had revived it; it died several years ago. I never met him, but in both Chicago and London (where he had "The Philistine," or "The Anti-Philistine," I do not at the moment remember which) he was most kind to me and my work. In one number of his magazine--the London one--he had four of my stories and a long article about me which called the blushes to my maiden cheek like the reflection of a red rose in the petal of a violet. Naturally I think well of Cowley-Brown.

You make me sad to think of the long leagues and the monstrous convexity of the earth separating me from your camp in the redwoods. There are few things that I would rather do than join that party; and I'd be the last to strike my tent and sling my swag. Alas, it cannot be--not this year. My outings are limited to short runs along this coast. I was about to set out on one this morning; and wrote a hasty note to Scheff in consequence of my preparations. In five hours I was suffering from asthma, and am now confined to my room. But for eight months of the year here I am immune--as I never was out there.

* * * * *

You will have to prepare yourself to endure a good deal of praise when that book is out. One does not mind when one gets accustomed to it. It neither pleases nor bores; you will have just no feeling about it at all. But if you really care for _my_ praise I hope you have quoted a bit of it at the head of those dedicatory verses, as I suggested. That will give them a _raison d'etre_.

With best regards to Mrs. Sterling and Katie I am sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

P.S.--If not too much trouble you may remind Dick Partington and wife that I continue to exist and to remember them pleasantly.

[N. Y. "American" Bureau, Washington, D. C., [July, 1903].]

DEAR SCHEFF:

I got the proofs yesterday, and am returning them by this mail. The "report of progress" is every way satisfactory, and I don't doubt that a neat job is being done.

The correction that you made is approved. I should have wanted and expected you to make many corrections and suggestions, but that I have had a purpose in making this book--namely, that it should represent my work at its average. In pursuance of this notion I was not hospitable even to suggestions, and have retained much work that I did not myself particularly approve; some of it trivial. You know I have always been addicted to trifling, and no book from which trivialities were excluded would fairly represent me.

I could not commend this notion in another. In your work and Sterling's I have striven hard to help you to come as near to perfection as we could, because perfection is what you and he want, and as young writers ought to want, the character of your work being higher than mine. I reached my literary level long ago, and seeing that it is not a high one there would seem to be a certain affectation, even a certain dishonesty, in making it seem higher than it is by republication of my best only. Of course I have not carried out this plan so consistently as to make the book dull: I had to "draw the line" at that.

I say all this because I don't want you and Sterling to think that I disdain assistance: I simply decided beforehand not to avail myself of its obvious advantages. You would have done as much for the book in one way as you have done in another.

I'll have to ask you to suggest that Mr. Wood have a man go over all the matter in the book, and see that none of the pieces are duplicated, as I fear they are. Reading the titles will not be enough: I might have given the same piece two titles. It will be necessary to compare first lines, I think. That will be drudgery which I'll not ask you to undertake: some of Wood's men, or some of the printer's men, will do it as well; it is in the line of their work.

The "Dies Irae" is the most earnest and sincere of religious poems; my travesty of it is mere solemn fooling, which fact is "given away" in the prose introduction, where I speak of my version being of possible service in the church! The travesty is not altogether unfair--it was inevitably suggested by the author's obvious inaccessibility to humor and logic--a peculiarity that is, however, observable in all religious literature, for it is a fundamental necessity to the religious mind. Without logic and a sense of the ludicrous a man is religious as certainly as without webbed feet a bird has the land habit.

It is funny, but I am a "whole lot" more interested in seeing your cover of the book than my contents of it. I don't at all doubt--since you dared undertake it--that your great conception will find a fit interpreter in your hand; so my feeling is not anxiety. It is just interest--pure interest in what is above my powers, but in which _you_ can work. By the way, Keller, of the old "Wasp" was _not_ the best of its cartoonists. The best--the best of _all_ cartoonists if he had not died at eighteen--was another German, named Barkhaus. I have all his work and have long cherished a wish to republish it with the needed explanatory text--much of it being "local" and "transient." Some day, perhaps--most likely not. But Barkhaus was a giant.

How I envy you! There are few things that would please me so well as to "drop in" on you folks in Sterling's camp. Honestly, I think all that prevents is the (to me) killing journey by rail. And two months would be required, going and returning by sea. But the rail trip across the continent always gives me a horrible case of asthma, which lasts for weeks. I shall never take _that_ journey again if I can avoid it. What times you and they will have about the campfire and the table! I feel like an exile, though I fear I don't look and act the part.

I did not make the little excursion I was about to take when I wrote you recently. Almost as I posted the letter I was taken ill and have not been well since.

Poor Doyle! how thoughtful of him to provide for the destruction of my letters! But I fear Mrs. Doyle found some of them queer reading--if she read them.

* * * * *

Great Scott! if ever they begin to publish mine there will be a circus! For of course the women will be the chief sinners, and--well, they have material a-plenty; they can make many volumes, and your poor dead friend will have so bad a reputation that you'll swear you never knew him. I dare say, though, you have sometimes been indiscreet, too. _My_ besetting sin has been in writing to my girl friends as if they were sweethearts--the which they'll doubtless not be slow to affirm. The fact that they write to me in the same way will be no defense; for when I'm worm's meat I can't present the proof--and wouldn't if I could. Maybe it won't matter--if I don't turn in my grave and so bother the worms.

As Doyle's "literary executor" I fear your duties will be light: he probably did not leave much manuscript. I judge from his letters that he was despondent about his work and the narrow acceptance that it had. So I assume that he did not leave much more than the book of poems, which no publisher would (or will) take.

You are about to encounter the same stupid indifference of the public--so is Sterling. I'm sure of Sterling, but don't quite know how it will affect _you_. You're a pretty sturdy fellow, physically and mentally, but this _may_ hurt horribly. I pray that it do not, and could give you--perhaps have given you--a thousand reasons why it _should_ not. You are still young and your fame may come while you live; but you must not expect it now, and doubtless do not. To me, and I hope to you, the approval of one person who knows is sweeter than the acclaim of ten thousand who do not--whose acclaim, indeed, I would rather not have. If you do not _feel_ this in every fibre of your brain and heart, try to learn to feel it--practice feeling it, as one practices some athletic feat necessary to health and strength.

Thank you very much for the photograph. You are growing too infernally handsome to be permitted to go about unchained. If I had your "advantages" of youth and comeliness I'd go to the sheriff and ask him to lock me up. That would be the honorable thing for you to do, if you don't mind. God be with you--but inattentive.

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Aurora, Preston Co., West Virginia, August 15, 1903.]

DEAR STERLING,

I fear that among the various cares incident to my departure from Washington I forgot, or neglected, to acknowledge the Joaquin Miller book that you kindly sent me. I was glad to have it. It has all his characteristic merits and demerits--among the latter, his interminable prolixity, the thinness of the thought, his endless repetition of favorite words and phrases, many of them from his other poems, his mispronunciation, his occasional flashes of prose, and so forth.

Scheff tells me his book is out and mine nearly out. But what of yours? I do fear me it never will be out if you rely upon its "acceptance" by any American publisher. If it meets with no favor among the publisher tribe we must nevertheless get it out; and you will of course let me do what I can. That is only tit for tat. But tell me about it.

I dare say Scheff, who is clever at getting letters out of me--the scamp!--has told you of my being up here atop of the Alleghenies, and why I _am_ here. I'm having a rather good time. * * * Can you fancy me playing croquet, cards, lawn--no, thank God, I've escaped lawn tennis and golf! In respect of other things, though, I'm a glittering specimen of the Summer Old Man.

Did _you_ have a good time in the redwoods?

Please present my compliments to Madame (and Mademoiselle) Sterling. Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Aurora, West Virginia, September 8, 1903.]

DEAR STERLING,

I return the verses with a few suggestions.

I'm sorry your time for poetry is so brief. But take your pencil and figure out how much you would write in thirty years (I hope you'll live that long) at, say, six lines a day. You'll be surprised by the result--and encouraged. Remember that 50,000 words make a fairly long book.

You make me shudder when you say you are reading the "Prattle" of years. I haven't it and should hardly dare to read it if I had. There is so much in it to deplore--so much that is not wise--so much that was the expression of a mood or a whim--so much was not altogether sincere--so many half-truths, and so forth. Make allowances, I beg, and where you cannot, just forgive.

Scheff has mentioned his great desire that you join the Bohemian Club. I know he wants me to advise you to do so. So I'm between two fires and would rather not advise at all. There are advantages (obvious enough) in belonging; and to one of your age and well grounded in sobriety and self-restraint generally, the disadvantages are not so great as to a youngster like Scheff. (Of course he is not so young as he seems to me; but he is younger by a few years and a whole lot of thought than you.)

The trouble with that kind of club--with any club--is the temptation to waste of time and money; and the danger of the drink habit. If one is proof against these a club is all right. I belong to one myself in Washington, and at one time came pretty near to "running" it.

* * * * *

No, I don't think Scheff's view of Kipling just. He asked me about putting that skit in the book. It _was_ his view and, that being so, I could see no reason for suppressing it in deference to those who do not hold it. I like free speech, though I'd not accord it to my enemies if I were Dictator. I should not think it for the good of the State to let * * * write verses, for example. The modern fad Tolerance does not charm me, but since it is all the go I'm willing that my friends should have their fling.

I dare say Scheff is unconscious of Kipling's paternity in the fine line in "Back, back to Nature":

"Loudly to the shore cries the surf upon the sea."

But turn to "The Last Chanty," in "The Seven Seas," fill your ears with it and you'll write just such a line yourself.

* * * * *

God be decent to you, old man.

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Aurora, West Virginia, September 12, 1903.]

DEAR STERLING,

I have yours of the 5th. Before now you have mine of _some_ date.

* * * * *

I'm glad you like London; I've heard he is a fine fellow and have read one of his books--"The Son of the Wolf," I think is the title--and it seemed clever work mostly. The general impression that remains with me is that it is always winter and always night in Alaska.

* * * * *

* * * will probably be glad to sell his scrap-book later, to get bread. He can't make a living out of the labor unions alone. I wish he were not a demgagoue and would not, as poor Doyle put it, go a-whoring after their Muse. When he returns to truth and poetry I'll receive him back into favor and he may kick me if he wants to.

No, I can't tell you how to get "Prattle"; if I could I'd not be without it myself. You ask me when I began it in the "Examiner." Soon after Hearst got the paper--I don't know the date--they can tell you at the office and will show you the bound volumes.

I have the bound volumes of the "Argonaut" and "Wasp" during the years when I was connected with them, but my work in the "Examiner" (and previously in the "News Letter" and the London "Fun" and "Figaro" and other papers) I kept only in a haphazard and imperfect way.

I don't recollect giving Scheff any "epigram" on woman or anything else. So I can't send it to you. I amuse myself occasionally with that sort of thing in the "Journal" ("American") and suppose Hearst's other papers copy them, but the "environment" is uncongenial and uninspiring.

Do I think extracts from "Prattle" would sell? I don't think anything of mine will sell. I could make a dozen books of the stuff that I have "saved up"--have a few ready for publication now--but all is vanity so far as profitable publication is concerned. Publishers want nothing from me but novels--and I'll die first.

Who is * * *--and why? It is good of London to defend me against him. I fancy all you fellows have a-plenty of defending me to do, though truly it is hardly worth while. All my life I have been hated and slandered by all manner of persons except good and intelligent ones; and I don't greatly mind. I knew in the beginning what I had to expect, and I know now that, like spanking, it hurts (sometimes) but does not harm. And the same malevolence that has surrounded my life will surround my memory if I am remembered. Just run over in your mind the names of men who have told the truth about their unworthy fellows and about human nature "as it was given them to see it." They are the bogie-men of history. None of them has escaped vilification. Can poor little I hope for anything better? When you strike you are struck. The world is a skunk, but it has rights; among them that of retaliation. Yes, you deceive yourself if you think the little fellows of letters "like" you, or rather if you think they will like you when they know how big you are. They will lie awake nights to invent new lies about you and new means of spreading them without detection. But you have your revenge: in a few years they'll all be dead--just the same as if you had killed them. Better yet, you'll be dead yourself. So--you have my entire philosophy in two words: "Nothing matters."

Reverting to Scheff. What he has to fear (if he cares) is not incompetent criticism, but public indifference. That does not bite, but poets are an ambitious folk and like the limelight and the center of the stage. Maybe Scheff is different, as I know you are. Try to make him so if he isn't. * * * Wise poets write for one another. If the public happens to take notice, well and good. Sometimes it does--and then the wise poet would a blacksmith be. But this screed is becoming an essay.

Please give my love to all good Sterlings--those by birth and those by marriage. * * *

My friends have returned to Washington, and I'm having great times climbing peaks (they are knobs) and exploring gulches and canyons--for which these people have no names--poor things. My dreamland is still unrevisited. They found a Confederate soldier over there the other day, with his rifle alongside. I'm going over to beg his pardon.

Ever yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Washington, D. C. [Postmarked October 12, 1903.]]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I have Jack London's books--the one from you and the one from him. I thank you and shall find the time to read them. I've been back but a few days and find a brace of dozen of books "intitualed" "Shapes of Clay." That the splendid work done by Scheff and Wood and your other associates in your labor of love is most gratifying to me should "go without saying." Surely _I_ am most fortunate in having so good friends to care for my interests. Still, there will be an aching void in the heart of me until _your_ book is in evidence. Honest, I feel more satisfaction in the work of you and Scheff than in my own. It is through you two that I expect my best fame. And how generously you accord it!--unlike certain others of my "pupils," whom I have assisted far more than I did you.

My trip through the mountains has done my health good--and my heart too. It was a "sentimental journey" in a different sense from Sterne's. Do you know, George, the charm of a new emotion? Of course you do, but at my age I had thought it impossible. Well, I had it repeatedly. Bedad, I think of going again into my old "theatre of war," and setting up a cabin there and living the few days that remain to me in meditation and sentimentalizing. But I should like you to be near enough to come up some Saturday night with some'at to drink. Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[N. Y. Journal Office, Washington, D. C., October 21, 1903.]

MY DEAR STERLING,

I'm indebted to you for two letters--awfully good ones. In the last you tell me that your health is better, and I can see for myself that your spirits are. This you attribute to exercise, correctly, no doubt. You need a lot of the open air--we all do. I can give myself hypochondria in forty-eight hours by staying in-doors. The sedentary life and abstracted contemplation of one's own navel are good for Oriental gods only. We spirits of a purer fire need sunlight and the hills. My own recent wanderings afoot and horseback in the mountains did me more good than a sermon. And you have "the hills back of Oakland"! God, what would I not give to help you range them, the dear old things! Why, I know every square foot of them from Walnut Creek to Niles Canyon. Of course they swarm with ghosts, as do all places out there, even the streets of San Francisco; but I and my ghosts always get on well together. With the female ones my relations are sometimes a bit better than they were with the dear creatures when they lived.

I guess I did not acknowledge the splendidly bound "Shapes" that you kindly sent, nor the Jack London books. Much thanks.

I'm pleased to know that Wood expects to sell the whole edition of my book, but am myself not confident of that.

So we are to have your book soon. Good, but I don't like your indifference to its outward and visible aspect. Some of my own books have offended, and continue to offend, in that way. At best a book is not too beautiful; at worst it is hideous. Be advised a bit by Scheff in this matter; his taste seems to me admirable and I'm well pleased by his work on the "Shapes"; even his covers, which I'm sorry to learn do not please Wood, appear to me excellent. I approved the design before he executed it--in fact chose it from several that he submitted. Its only fault seems to me too much gold leaf, but that is a fault "on the right side." In that and all the rest of the work (except my own) experts here are delighted. I gave him an absolutely free hand and am glad I did. I don't like the ragged leaves, but he does not either, on second thought. The public--the reading public--I fear does, just now.

I'll get at your new verses in a few days. It will be, as always it is, a pleasure to go over them.

About "Prattle." I should think you might get help in that matter from Oscar T. Schuck, 2916 Laguna St. He used to suffer from "Prattle" a good deal, but is very friendly, and the obtaining it would be in the line of his present business.

How did you happen to hit on Markham's greatest two lines--but I need not ask that--from "The Wharf of Dreams"?

Well, I wish I could think that those lines of mine in "Geotheos" were worthy to be mentioned with Keats' "magic casements" and Coleridge's "woman wailing for her demon lover." But I don't think any lines of anybody are. I laugh at myself to remember that Geotheos, never before in print I believe, was written for E. L. G. Steele to read before a "young ladies' seminary" somewhere in the cow counties! Like a man of sense he didn't read it. I don't share your regret that I have not devoted myself to serious poetry. I don't think of myself as a poet, but as a satirist; so I'm entitled to credit for what little gold there may be in the mud I throw. But if I professed gold-throwing, the mud which I should surely mix with the missiles would count against me. Besides, I've a preference for being the first man in a village, rather than the second man in Rome. Poetry is a ladder on which there is now no room at the top--unless you and Scheff throw down some of the chaps occupying the upper rung. It looks as if you might, but I could not. When old Homer, Shakspeare and that crowd--building better than Ozymandias--say: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" I, considering myself specially addressed, despair. The challenge of the wits does not alarm me.

* * * * *

As to your problems in grammar.

If you say: "There is no hope _or_ fear" you say that _one_ of them does not exist. In saying: "There is no hope _nor_ fear" you say that _both_ do not exist--which is what you mean.

"Not to weary you, I shall say that I fetched the book from his cabin." Whether that is preferable to "I will say" depends on just what is meant; both are grammatical. The "shall" merely indicates an intention to say; the "will" implies a certain shade of concession in saying it.

It is no trouble to answer such questions, _nor_ to do anything else to please you. I only hope I make it clear.

I don't know if all my "Journal" work gets into the "Examiner," for I don't see all the issues of either paper. I'm not writing much anyhow. They don't seem to want much from me, and their weekly check is about all that I want from them.

* * * * *

No, I don't know any better poem of Kipling than "The Last Chanty." Did you see what stuff of his Prof. Harry Thurston Peck, the Hearst outfit's special literary censor, chose for a particular commendation the other day? Yet Peck is a scholar, a professor of Latin and a writer of merited distinction. Excepting the ability to write poetry, the ability to understand it is, I think, the rarest of intellectual gifts. Let us thank "whatever gods may be" that we have it, if we haven't so very much else.

I've a lovely birch stick a-seasoning for you--cut it up in the Alleghanies.

* * * * *

Sincerely yours,
AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Washington, D. C., October 29, 1903.]

DEAR GEORGE,

I return the verses--with apology for tardiness. I've been "full up" with cares.

* * * * *

I would not change "Religion" to "Dogma" (if I were you) for all "the pious monks of St. Bernard." Once you begin to make concessions to the feelings of this person or that there is no place to stop and you may as well hang up the lyre. Besides, Dogma does not "seek"; it just impudently declares something to have been found. However, it is a small matter--nothing can destroy the excellence of the verses. I only want to warn you against yielding to a temptation which will assail you all your life--the temptation to "edit" your thought for somebody whom it may pain. Be true to Truth and let all stand from under.

Yes, I think the quatrain that you wrote in Col. Eng's book good enough to go in your own. But I'd keep "discerning," instead of substituting "revering." In art discernment _carries_ reverence.

_Of course_ I expect to say something of Scheff's book, but in no paper with which I have a present connection can I regularly "review" it. Hearst's papers would give it incomparably the widest publicity, but they don't want "reviews" from me. They have Millard, who has already reviewed it--right well too--and Prof. Peck--who possibly might review it if it were sent to him. "Prof. Harry Thurston Peck, care of 'The American,' New York City." Mention it to Scheff. I'm trying to find out what I can do.

I'm greatly pleased to observe your ability to estimate the relative value of your own poems--a rare faculty. "To Imagination" is, _I_ think, the best of all your short ones.

I'm impatient for the book. It, too, I shall hope to write something about. Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Navarre Hotel and Importation Co., Seventh Avenue and 38th St., New York, December 26, 1903.]

DEAR GEORGE,

A thousand cares have prevented my writing to you--and Scheff. And this is to be a "busy day." But I want to say that I've not been unmindful of your kindness in sending the book--which has hardly left my pocket since I got it. And I've read nothing in it more than once, excepting the "Testimony." _That_ I've studied, line by line--and "precept by precept"--finding in it always "something rich and strange." It is greater than I knew; it is the greatest "ever"!

I'm saying a few words about it in tomorrow's "American"--would that I had a better place for what I say and more freedom of saying. But they don't want, and won't have, "book reviews" from me; probably because I will not undertake to assist their advertising publishers. So I have to disguise my remarks and work up to them as parts of another topic. In this case I have availed myself of my favorite "horrible example," Jim Riley, who ought to be proud to be mentioned on the same page with you. After all, the remarks may not appear; I have the _littlest_ editor that ever blue-penciled whatever he thought particularly dear to the writer. I'm here for only a few days, I hope.

* * * * *

I want to say that you seem to me greatest when you have the greatest subject--not flowers, women and all that,--but something above the flower-and-woman belt--something that you see from altitudes from which _they_ are unseen and unsmelled. Your poetry is incomparable with that of our other poets, but your thought, philosophy,--that is greater yet. But I'm writing this at a desk in the reading room of a hotel; when I get home I'll write you again.

I'm concerned about your health, of which I get bad reports. Can't you go to the mesas of New Mexico and round up cattle for a year or two--or do anything that will permit, or compel, you to sleep out-of-doors under your favorite stars--something that will _not_ permit you to enter a house for even ten minutes? You say no. Well, some day you'll _have_ to--when it is too late--like Peterson, my friend Charley Kaufman and so many others, who might be living if they had gone into that country in time and been willing to make the sacrifice when it would have done good. You can go _now_ as well as _then_; and if now you'll come back well, if then, you'll not only sacrifice your salary, "prospects," and so forth, but lose your life as well. I _know_ that kind of life would cure you. I've talked with dozens of men whom it did cure.

You'll die of consumption if you don't. Twenty-odd years ago I was writing articles on the out-of-doors treatment for consumption. Now--only just now--the physicians are doing the same, and establishing out-of-door sanitaria for consumption.

You'll say you haven't consumption. I don't say that you have. But you will have if you listen to yourself saying: "I can't do it." * * *

Pardon me, my friend, for this rough advice as to your personal affairs: I am greatly concerned about you. Your life is precious to me and to the world. Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Washington, D. C., January 8, 1904.]

MY DEAR GEORGE,

Thank you so much for the books and the inscription--which (as do all other words of praise) affects me with a sad sense of my shortcomings as writer and man. Things of that kind from too partial friends point out to me with a disquieting significance what I ought to be; and the contrast with what I am hurts. Maybe you feel enough that way sometimes to understand. You are still young enough to profit by the pain; _my_ character is made--_my_ opportunities are gone. But it does not greatly matter--nothing does. I have some little testimony from you and Scheff and others that I have not lived altogether in vain, and I know that I have greater satisfaction in my slight connection with your and their work than in my own. Also a better claim to the attention and consideration of my fellow-men.