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.]