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.]