Fail not to let me know when to expect you for the Guerneville trip. * * *
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
The Laguna Vista,
October 20,
1910.
I go back to the Inn on Saturday.
Dear George,
It is long since I read the Book of Job, but if I thought it better than your addition to it I should not sleep until I had read it again—and again. Such a superb Who's Who in the Universe! Not a Homeric hero in the imminence of a personal encounter ever did so fine bragging. I hope you will let it into your next book, if only to show that the "inspired" scribes of the Old Testament are not immatchable by modern genius. You know the Jews regard them, not as prophets, in our sense, but merely as poets—and the Jews ought to know something of their own literature.
I fear I shall not be able to go to Carmel while you're a widow—I've tangled myself up with engagements again. Moreover, I'm just back from the St. Helena cemetery, and for a few days shall be too blue for companionship.
"Shifted" is better, I think (in poetry) than "joggled." You say you "don't like working." Then write a short story. That's work, but you'd like it—or so I think. Poetry is the highest of arts, but why be a specialist?
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.