You seem to be living at the old place in Vallejo Street, so I judge that it was spared by the fire. I had some pretty good times in that house, not only with you and Mrs. Morrow (to whom my love, please) but with the dear Hogan girls. Poor Flodie! she is nearly a sole survivor now. I wonder if she ever thinks of us. I hear from California frequently through a little group of interesting folk who foregather at Carmel--whither I shall perhaps stray some day and there leave my bones. Meantime, I am fairly happy here. I wish you would add yourself to the Carmel crowd. You would be a congenial member of the gang and would find them worth while. You must know George Sterling: he is the high panjandrum and a gorgeously good fellow. Go get thee a bungalow at Carmel, which is indubitably the charmingest place in the State. As to San Francisco, with its labor-union government, its thieves and other impossibilities, I could not be drawn into it by a team of behemoths. But California--ah, I dare not permit myself to remember it. Yet this Eastern country is not without charm. And my health is good here, as it never was there. Nothing ails me but age, which brings its own cure. God keep thee!--go and live at Carmel. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., October 29, 1907.] JAMES D. BLAKE, ESQ., DEAR SIR: It is a matter of no great importance to me, but the republication of the foolish books that you mention would not be agreeable to me. They have no kind of merit or interest. One of them, "The Fiend's Delight," was published against my protest; the utmost concession that the compiler and publisher (the late John Camden Hatten, London) would make was to let me edit his collection of my stuff and write a preface. You would pretty surely lose money on any of them. If you care to republish anything of mine you would, I think, do better with "Black Beetles in Amber," or "Shapes of Clay." The former sold well, and the latter would, I think, have done equally well if the earthquake-and-fire had not destroyed it, including the plates. Nearly all of both books were sold in San Francisco, and the sold, as well as the unsold, copies--I mean the unsold copies of the latter--perished in the fire. There is much inquiry for them (mainly from those who lost them) and I am told that they bring fancy prices. You probably know about that better than I. I should be glad to entertain proposals from you for their republication--in San Francisco--and should not be exacting as to royalties, and so forth. But the other books are "youthful indiscretions" and are "better dead." Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D. C., December 28,1907.] DEAR GEORGE, * * * * *