I'm concerned about your health, of which I get bad reports. Can't you go to the mesas of New Mexico and round up cattle for a year or two—or do anything that will permit, or compel, you to sleep out-of-doors under your favorite stars—something that will not permit you to enter a house for even ten minutes? You say no. Well, some day you'll have to—when it is too late—like Peterson, my friend Charley Kaufman and so many others, who might be living if they had gone into that country in time and been willing to make the sacrifice when it would have done good. You can go now as well as then; and if now you'll come back well, if then, you'll not only sacrifice your salary, "prospects," and so forth, but lose your life as well. I know that kind of life would cure you. I've talked with dozens of men whom it did cure.
You'll die of consumption if you don't. Twenty-odd years ago I was writing articles on the out-of-doors treatment for consumption. Now—only just now—the physicians are doing the same, and establishing out-of-door sanitaria for consumption.
You'll say you haven't consumption. I don't say that you have. But you will have if you listen to yourself saying: "I can't do it." * * *
Pardon me, my friend, for this rough advice as to your personal affairs: I am greatly concerned about you. Your life is precious to me and to the world. Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
Washington, D. C.,
January 8,
1904.
My dear George,
Thank you so much for the books and the inscription—which (as do all other words of praise) affects me with a sad sense of my shortcomings as writer and man. Things of that kind from too partial friends point out to me with a disquieting significance what I ought to be; and the contrast with what I am hurts. Maybe you feel enough that way sometimes to understand. You are still young enough to profit by the pain; my character is made—my opportunities are gone. But it does not greatly matter—nothing does. I have some little testimony from you and Scheff and others that I have not lived altogether in vain, and I know that I have greater satisfaction in my slight connection with your and their work than in my own. Also a better claim to the attention and consideration of my fellow-men.
Never mind about the "slow sale" of my book; I did not expect it to be otherwise, and my only regret grows out of the fear that some one may lose money by the venture. It is not to be you. You know I am still a little "in the dark" as to what you have really done in the matter. I wish you would tell me if any of your own money went into it. The contract with Wood is all right; it was drawn according to my instructions and I shall not even accept the small royalty allowed me if anybody is to be "out." If you are to be out I shall not only not accept the royalty, but shall reimburse you to the last cent. Do you mind telling me about all that? In any case don't "buy out Wood" and don't pay out anything for advertising nor for anything else.
The silence of the reviewers does not trouble me, any more than it would you. Their praise of my other books never, apparently, did me any good. No book published in this country ever received higher praise from higher sources than my first collection of yarns. But the book was never a "seller," and doubtless never will be. That I like it fairly well is enough. You and I do not write books to sell; we write—or rather publish—just because we like to. We've no right to expect a profit from fun.