Truly, I should like to attend one of your at-homes, but I fear it must be a long time before I venture down there again. But when this brumous visitation is past I can look down, and that assists the imagination to picture you all in your happy (I hope) home. But if that woolly wolf, Joaquin Miller, doesn't keep outside the fold I shall come down and club him soundly. I quite agree with your mother that his flattery will spoil you. You said I would spoil Phyllis, and now, you bad girl, you wish to be spoiled yourself. Well, you can't eat four Millerine oranges.—My love to all your family. Ambrose Bierce.
Angwin,
March 26,
1893.
My dear Partington,
I am very glad indeed to get the good account of Leigh that you give me. I've feared that he might be rather a bore to you, but you make me easy on that score. Also I am pleased that you think he has a sufficient "gift" to do something in the only direction in which he seems to care to go.
He is anxious to take the place at the Examiner, and his uncle thinks that would be best—if they will give it him. I'm a little reluctant for many reasons, but there are considerations—some of them going to the matter of character and disposition—which point to that as the best arrangement. The boy needs discipline, control, and work. He needs to learn by experience that life is not all beer and skittles. Of course you can't quite know him as I do. As to his earning anything on the Examiner or elsewhere, that cuts no figure—he'll spend everything he can get his fingers on anyhow; but I feel that he ought to have the advantage of a struggle for existence where the grass is short and the soil stony.
Well, I shall let him live down there somehow, and see what can be done with him. There's a lot of good in him, and a lot of the other thing, naturally.
I hope Hume has, or will, put you in authority in the Post and give you a decent salary. He seems quite enthusiastic about the Post and—about you.
With sincere regards to Mrs. Partington and all the Partingtonettes, I am very truly yours, Ambrose Bierce.