As to * * *, as he is not more than a long-range or short-acquaintance friend of yours, I'll say that I would not believe him under oath on his deathbed. * * * The truth is, none of these howlers knows the difference between a million and a thousand nor between truth and falsehood. I could give you instances of their lying about matters here at the capital that would make even your hair stand on end. It is not only that they are all liars--they are mere children; they don't know anything and don't care to, nor, for prosperity in their specialties, need to. Veracity would be a disqualification; if they confined themselves to facts they would not get a hearing. * * * is the nastiest futilitarian of the gang. It is not the purpose of these gentlemen that I find so very objectionable, but the foul means that they employ to accomplish it. I would be a good deal of a Socialist myself if they had not made the word (and the thing) stink. Don't imagine that I'll not "enter Carmel" if I come out there. I'll visit you till you're sick of me. But I'd not _live_ there and be "identified" with it, as the newspapers would say. I'm warned by Hawthorne and Brook Farm. I'm still working--a little more leisurely--on my books. But I begin to feel the call of New York on the tympani of my blood globules. I must go there occasionally, or I should die of intellectual torpor. * * * "O Lord how long?"--this letter. O well, you need not give it the slightest attention; there's nothing, I think, that requires a reply, nor merits one. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [Washington, D. C., March 6, 1909.] DEAR GEORGE, * * * * * Did you see Markham's review of the "Wine" in "The N. Y. American"? Pretty fair, but--if a metrical composition full of poetry is not a poem what is it? And I wonder what he calls Kubla Khan, which has a beginning but neither middle nor end. And how about The Faerie Queene for absence of "unity"? Guess I'll ask him. Isn't it funny what happens to critics who would mark out meters and bounds for the Muse--denying the name "poem," for example, to a work because it is not like some other work, or like one that is in the minds of them? I hope you are prosperous and happy and that I shall sometimes hear from you. Howes writes me that the "Lone Hand"--Sydney--has been commending you. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [Washington, D. C., October 9, 1909.] DEAR GEORGE, I return the poems with a few random comments and suggestions.