Anything which would throw light on such a figure, at once obscure and famous, is valuable. These letters of Ambrose Bierce, here printed for the first time, are therefore of unusual interest. They are the informal literary work--the term is used advisedly--of a man esteemed great by a small but acutely critical group, read enthusiastically by a somewhat larger number to whom critical examination of what they read seldom occurs, and ignored by the vast majority of readers; a man at once more hated and more adored than any on the Pacific Coast; a man not ten years off the scene yet already become a tradition and a legend; whose life, no less than his death, held elements of mystery, baffling contradictions, problems for puzzled conjecture, motives and meanings not vouchsafed to outsiders. Were Ambrose Bierce as well known as he deserves to be, the introduction to these letters could be slight; we should not have to stop to inquire who he was and what he did. As it is, we must. Ambrose Bierce, the son of Marcus Aurelius and Laura (Sherwood) Bierce, born in Meiggs County, Ohio, June 24, 1842, was at the outbreak of the Civil War a youth without formal education, but with a mind already trained. "My father was a poor farmer," he once said to a friend, "and could give me no general education, but he had a good library, and to his books I owe all that I have." He promptly volunteered in 1861 and served throughout the war. Twice, at the risk of his life, he rescued wounded companions from the battlefield, and at Kenesaw Mountain was himself severely wounded in the head. He was brevetted Major for distinguished services; but in after life never permitted the title to be used in addressing him. There is a story that when the war was over he tossed up a coin to determine what should be his career. Whatever the determining auguries, he came at once to San Francisco to join his favorite brother Albert--there were ten brothers and sisters to choose from--and for a short time worked with him in the Mint; he soon began writing paragraphs for the weeklies, particularly the _ARGONAUT_ and the _NEWS LETTER_. "I was a slovenly writer in those days," he observes in a letter forty years later, "though enough better than my neighbors to have attracted my own attention. My knowledge of English was imperfect 'a whole lot.' Indeed, my intellectual status (whatever it may be, and God knows it's enough to make me blush) was of slow growth--as was my moral. I mean, I had not literary sincerity." Apparently, attention other than his own was attracted, for he was presently editing the _NEWS LETTER_.