The Letters of Ambrose Bierce, With a Memoir by George Sterling

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

* * *

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C.,

December 11,

1908.

Dear George,

* * *

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

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

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

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C.,

January 9,

1909.

Dear George,

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C.,

March 6,

1909.

Dear George,

* * *

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

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

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

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

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C.,

October 9,

1909.

Dear George,

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.

Washington, D. C.,

November 1,

1909.

Dear George,

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

Washington, D. C.,

January 29,

1910.

Dear George,

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

As to some points in your letter.

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

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

I'm enclosing something that will tickle you I hope – "The Ballade of the Goodly Fere." The author's¹² father, who is something in the Mint in Philadelphia, sent me several of his son's poems that were not good; but at last came this – in manuscript, like the others. Before I could do anything with it – meanwhile wearing out the paper and the patience of my friends by reading it at them – the old man asked it back rather peremptorily. I reluctantly sent it, with a letter of high praise. The author had "placed" it in London, where it has made a heap of talk.

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

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

Washington, D. C.,

March 7,

1910.

Dear George,

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

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

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

 
"The 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.

Baloo¹³ and his cubs went on to Guerneville the day of their return from Carmel. But I saw them.

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 Cañon 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 Cañon. It is not easy to compare them, they are so different. In Yosemite only the magnitudes are unfamiliar; in the Cañon 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 Cañon 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 Cañon, so as to have my scenic treasures all together. Also I'm trying to get for you a certain book of Cañon 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,