* * *
Great Scott! if ever they begin to publish mine there will be a circus! For of course the women will be the chief sinners, and—well, they have material a-plenty; they can make many volumes, and your poor dead friend will have so bad a reputation that you'll swear you never knew him. I dare say, though, you have sometimes been indiscreet, too. My besetting sin has been in writing to my girl friends as if they were sweethearts—the which they'll doubtless not be slow to affirm. The fact that they write to me in the same way will be no defense; for when I'm worm's meat I can't present the proof—and wouldn't if I could. Maybe it won't matter—if I don't turn in my grave and so bother the worms.
As Doyle's "literary executor" I fear your duties will be light: he probably did not leave much manuscript. I judge from his letters that he was despondent about his work and the narrow acceptance that it had. So I assume that he did not leave much more than the book of poems, which no publisher would (or will) take.
You are about to encounter the same stupid indifference of the public—so is Sterling. I'm sure of Sterling, but don't quite know how it will affect you. You're a pretty sturdy fellow, physically and mentally, but this may hurt horribly. I pray that it do not, and could give you—perhaps have given you—a thousand reasons why it should not. You are still young and your fame may come while you live; but you must not expect it now, and doubtless do not. To me, and I hope to you, the approval of one person who knows is sweeter than the acclaim of ten thousand who do not—whose acclaim, indeed, I would rather not have. If you do not feel this in every fibre of your brain and heart, try to learn to feel it—practice feeling it, as one practices some athletic feat necessary to health and strength.
Thank you very much for the photograph. You are growing too infernally handsome to be permitted to go about unchained. If I had your "advantages" of youth and comeliness I'd go to the sheriff and ask him to lock me up. That would be the honorable thing for you to do, if you don't mind. God be with you—but inattentive.
Ambrose Bierce.
Aurora,
Preston Co.,
West Virginia,
August 15,
1903.
Dear Sterling,
I fear that among the various cares incident to my departure from Washington I forgot, or neglected, to acknowledge the Joaquin Miller book that you kindly sent me. I was glad to have it. It has all his characteristic merits and demerits—among the latter, his interminable prolixity, the thinness of the thought, his endless repetition of favorite words and phrases, many of them from his other poems, his mispronunciation, his occasional flashes of prose, and so forth.