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.]