Keep up your German and French of course. If your English (your mother speech) is so defective, think what they must be.
I'll think of some books that will be helpful to you in your English. Meantime send me anything that you care to that you write. It will at least show me what progress you make.
I'm returning some (all, I think) of your sketches. Don't destroy them—yet. Maybe some day you'll find them worth rewriting.
My love to you all. Ambrose Bierce.
The Olympia,
Euclid and 14th Sts.,
Washington, D. C.,
January 20,
1913.
Dear Mr. Cahill,
It is pleasant to know that you are not easily discouraged by the croaking of such ravens as I, and I confess that the matter of the "civic centre" supplies some reason to hope for prosperity to the Cahill projection—which (another croak) will doubtless bear some other man's name, probably Hayford's or Woodward's.
I sent the "Argonaut" article to my friend Dr. Franklin, of Schenectady, a "scientific gent" of some note, but have heard nothing from him.
I'm returning the "Chronicle" article, which I found interesting. If I were not a writer without an "organ" I'd have a say about that projection. For near four years I've been out of the newspaper game—a mere compiler of my collected works in twelve volumes—and shall probably never "sit into the game" again, being seventy years old. My work is finished, and so am I.