Dear George,
I've been in New York again but am slowly recovering. I saw Neale. He assures me that the magazine will surely materialize about June, and he wants the poem, "A Wine of Wizardry," with an introduction by me. I think he means it; if so that will give it greater publicity than what you have in mind, even if the mag eventually fail. Magazines if well advertised usually sell several hundred thousand of the first issue; the trick is to keep them going. Munsey's "Scrap Book" disposed of a half-million. * * *
* * * was to start for a few weeks in California about now. I hope you will see him. He is not a bad lot when convinced that one respects him. He has been treated pretty badly in this neck o' the woods, as is every Western man who breaks into this realm of smugwumps.
My benediction upon Carmelites all and singular—if any are all.
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
Doubleday, Page & Co. are to publish my "Cynic's Dictionary."
The Army and Navy Club,
Washington, D. C.,
April 20,
1906.
Dear George,
I write in the hope that you are alive and the fear that you are wrecked.[8]