Dear Sterling,
This is just a hasty note to acknowledge receipt of your letter and the poems. I hope to reach those pretty soon and give them the attention which I am sure they will prove to merit—which I cannot do now. By the way, I wonder why most of you youngsters so persistently tackle the sonnet. For the same reason, I suppose, that a fellow always wants to make his first appearance on the stage in the rôle of "Hamlet." It is just the holy cheek of you.
Yes, Leigh prospers fairly well, and I—well, I don't know if it is prosperity; it is a pretty good time.
I suppose I shall have to write to that old scoundrel Grizzly,[1] to give him my new address, though I supposed he had it; and the old one would do, anyhow. Now that his cub has returned he probably doesn't care for the other plantigrades of his kind.
Thank you for telling me so much about some of our companions and companionesses of the long ago. I fear that not all my heart was in my baggage when I came over here. There's a bit of it, for example, out there by that little lake in the hills.
So I may have a photograph of one of your pretty sisters. Why, of course I want it—I want the entire five of them; their pictures, I mean. If you had been a nice fellow you would have let me know them long ago. And how about that other pretty girl, your infinitely better half? You might sneak into the envelope a little portrait of her, lest I forget, lest I forget. But I've not yet forgotten.
The new century's best blessings to the both o' you. Ambrose Bierce.
P.S.—In your studies of poetry have you dipped into Stedman's new "American Anthology"? It is the most notable collection of American verse that has been made—on the whole, a book worth having. In saying so I rather pride myself on my magnanimity; for of course I don't think he has done as well by me as he might have done. That, I suppose, is what every one thinks who happens to be alive to think it. So I try to be in the fashion. A. B.
[1] Albert Bierce.
