Of course I could not but be pleased by your inclusion of that sonnet on me in your book. And, by the way, I'm including in my tenth volume my _Cosmopolitan_ article on the "Wine" and my end of the controversy about it. All the volumes of the set are to be out by June, saith the publisher. He is certainly half-killing me with proofs--mountains of proofs! * * * Yes, you'll doubtless have a recruit in Carlt for your Socialist menagerie--if he is not already a veteran exhibit. Your "party" is recruited from among sore-heads only. There are some twenty-five thousand of them (sore-heads) in this neck o' woods--all disloyal--all growling at the Government which feeds and clothes them twice as well as they could feed and clothe themselves in private employment. They move Heaven and Earth to get in, and they never resign--just "take it out" in abusing the Government. If I had my way nobody should remain in the civil service more than five years--at the end of that period all are disloyal. Not one of them cares a rap for the good of the service or the country--as we soldiers used to do on thirteen dollars a month (with starvation, disease and death thrown in). Their grievance is that the Government does not undertake to maintain them in the style to which they choose to accustom themselves. They fix their standard of living just a little higher than they can afford, and would do so no matter what salary they got, as all salary-persons invariably do. Then they damn their employer for not enabling them to live up to it. If they can do better "outside" why don't they go outside and do so; if they can't (which means that they are getting more than they are worth) what are they complaining about? What this country needs--what every country needs occasionally--is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends. Meantime, you socialers, anarchists and other sentimentaliters and futilitarians will find the civil-service your best recruiting ground, for it is the Land of Reasonless Discontent. I yearn for the strong-handed Dictator who will swat you all on the mouths o' you till you are "heard to cease." Until then--How? (drinking.) Yours sincerely, AMBROSE BIERCE. [Washington, D. C., February 19, 1911.] DEAR LORA, Every evening coffee is made for me in my rooms, but I have not yet ventured to take it from _your_ cup for fear of an accident to the cup. Some of the women in this house are stark, staring mad about that cup and saucer, and the plate.