You'll probably see Howes next Summer—I've persuaded him to go West and renounce the bookworm habit for some other folly. Be good to him; he is a capital fellow in his odd, amusing way.
I didn't know there was an American edition of "The Fiends' Delight." Who published it and when?
Congratulations on acceptance of "Tasso and Leonora." But I wouldn't do much in blank verse if I were you. It betrays you (somehow) into mere straightaway expression, and seems to repress in you the glorious abundance of imagery and metaphor that enriches your rhyme-work. This is not a criticism, particularly, of "Tasso," which is good enough for anybody, but—well, it's just so.
I'm not doing much. My stuff in the Cosmo. comes last, and when advertisements crowd some of it is left off. Most of it gets in later (for of course I don't replace it with more work) but it is sadly antiquated. My checks, though, are always up to date. Sincerely[10] yours, Ambrose Bierce.
[10] I can almost say "sinecurely."
The Army and
Navy Club,
Washington, D. C.,
January 19,
1908.
My dear George,
I have just come upon a letter of yours that I got at Galveston and (I fear) did not acknowledge. But I've written you since, so I fancy all is well.
You mention that sonnet that Chamberlain asked for. You should not have let him have it—it was, as you say, the kind of stuff that magazines like. Nay, it was even better. But I wish you'd sent it elsewhere. You owed it to me not to let the Cosmopolitan's readers see anything of yours (for awhile, at least) that was less than great. Something as great as the sonnet that you sent to McClure's was what the circumstances called for.