The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 15

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 a.s.sail 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 subst.i.tuting "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 a.s.sist 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 alt.i.tudes 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, 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.

Never mind about the "slow sale" of my book; I did not expect it to be otherwise, and my only regret grows out of the fear that some one may lose money by the venture. _It is not to be you._ You know I am still a little "in the dark" as to what _you_ have really done in the matter. I wish you would tell me if any of your own money went into it. The contract with Wood is all right; it was drawn according to my instructions and I shall not even accept the small royalty allowed me if anybody is to be "out." If _you_ are to be out I shall not only not accept the royalty, but shall reimburse you to the last cent. Do you mind telling me about all that? In any case don't "buy out Wood" and don't pay out anything for advertising nor for anything else.

The silence of the reviewers does not trouble me, any more than it would you. Their praise of my other books never, apparently, did me any good. No book published in this country ever received higher praise from higher sources than my first collection of yarns. But the book was never a "seller," and doubtless never will be. That _I_ like it fairly well is enough. You and I do not write books to sell; we write--or rather publish--just because we like to. We've no right to expect a profit from fun.

It is odd and amusing that you could have supposed that I had any other reason for not writing to you than a fixed habit of procrastination, some preoccupation with my small affairs and a very burdensome correspondence. Probably you _could_ give me a grievance by trying hard, but if you ever are conscious of not having tried you may be sure that I haven't the grievance.

I should have supposed that the author of "Viverols" and several excellent monographs on fish would have understood your poems. (O no; I don't mean that your Muse is a mermaid.) Perhaps he did, but you know how temperate of words men of science are by habit. Did you send a book to Garrett Serviss? I should like to know what he thinks of the "Testimony." As to Joaquin, it is his detestable habit, as it was Longfellow's, to praise all poetry submitted to him, and he said of Madge Morris's coyote poem the identical thing that he says of your work. Sorry to disillusionize you, but it is so.

As to your health. You give me great comfort. * * * But it was not only from Scheff that I had bad accounts of you and "your cough." Scheff, indeed, has been reticent in the matter, but evidently anxious; and you yourself have written despondently and "forecasted" an early pa.s.sing away. If nothing is the matter with you and your lungs some of your friends are poor observers. I'm happy to have your testimony, and beg to withdraw my project for your recovery. You whet my appet.i.te for that new poem. The lines

"The blue-eyed vampire, sated at her feast, Smiles bloodily against the leprous moon"

give me the s.h.i.+vers. Gee! they're awful! Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., February 5, 1904.]

DEAR GEORGE,

You should not be irritated by the "conspiracy of silence" about me on the part of the "Call," the "Argonaut" and other papers. Really my enemies are under no obligation to return good for evil; I fear I should not respect them if they did. * * *, his head still sore from my many beatings of that "distracted globe," would be a comic figure stammering his sense of my merit and directing attention to the excellence of the literary wares on my shelf.

As to the pig of a public, its indifference to a diet of pearls--_our_ pearls--was not unknown to me, and truly it does not trouble me anywhere except in the pocket. _That_ pig, too, is not much beholden to me, who have pounded the snout of it all my life. Why should it a.s.sist in the rite? Its indifference to _your_ work const.i.tutes a new provocation and calls for added whacks, but not its indifference to mine.

The Ashton Stevens interview was charming. His finding you and Scheff together seems too idyllic to be true--I thought it a fake. He put in quite enough--too much--about me. As to Joaquin's hack at me--why, that was magnanimity itself in one who, like most of us, does not offset blame against praise, subtract the latter from the former and find matter for thanks in the remainder. You know "what fools we mortals be"; criticism that is not all honey is all vinegar. n.o.body has more delighted than I in pointing out the greatness of Joaquin's great work; but n.o.body than I has more austerely condemned * * *, his vanity and the general humbugery that makes his prose so insupportable. Joaquin is a good fellow, all the same, and you should not demand of him impossible virtues and a reach of reasonableness that is alien to him.

I have the books you kindly sent and have planted two or three in what I think fertile soil which I hope will produce a small crop of appreciation.

And the poem![7] I hardly know how to speak of it. No poem in English of equal length has so bewildering a wealth of imagination. Not Spenser himself has flung such a profusion of jewels into so small a casket. Why, man, it takes away the breath! I've read and reread--read it for the expression and read it for the thought (always when I speak of the "thought" in your work I mean the meaning--which is another thing) and I shall read it many times more. And pretty soon I'll get at it with my red ink and see if I can suggest anything worth your attention. I fear not.

[7] "A Wine of Wizardry."

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

["New York American" Office, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., February 29, 1904.]

DEAR GEORGE,

I wrote you yesterday. Since then I have been rereading your letter. I wish you would not say so much about what I have done for you, and how much it was worth to you, and all that. I should be sorry to think that I did not do a little for you--I tried to. But, my boy, you should know that I don't keep that kind of service _on sale_.

Moreover, I'm amply repaid by what _you_ have done for _me_--I mean with your pen. Do you suppose _I_ do not value such things? Does it seem reasonable to think me unpleasured by those magnificent dedicatory verses in your book? Is it nothing to me to be called "Master" by such as you? Is my nature so cold that I have no pride in such a pupil? There is no obligation in the matter--certainly none that can be suffered to satisfy itself out of your pocket.