So you begin to suspect that books do not give you the truth of life and character. Well, that suspicion is the beginning of wisdom, and, so far as it goes, a preliminary qualification for writing--books. Men and women are certainly not what books represent them to be, nor what _they_ represent--and sometimes believe--themselves to be. They are better, they are worse, and far more interesting. With best regards to all your people, and in the hope that we may frequently hear from you, I am very sincerely your friend, AMBROSE BIERCE. Both the children send their _love_ to you. And they mean just that. [St. Helena, October 6, 1892.] MY DEAR BLANCHE, I send you by this mail the current _New England Magazine_--merely because I have it by me and have read all of it that I shall have leisure to read. Maybe it will entertain you for an idle hour. I have so far recovered my health that I hope to do a little pot-boiling to-morrow. (Is that properly written with a hyphen?--for the life o' me I can't say, just at this moment. There is a story of an old actor who having played one part half his life had to cut out the name of the person he represented wherever it occurred in his lines: he could never remember which syllable to accent.) My illness was only asthma, which, unluckily, does not kill me and so should not alarm my friends. Dr. Danziger writes that he has ordered your father's sketch sent me. And I've ordered a large number of extra impressions of it--if it is still on the stone. So you see I like it. Let me hear from you and about you. Sincerely your friend, AMBROSE BIERCE. I enclose Bib. [St. Helena, October 7, 1892.] DEAR MR. PARTINGTON, I've been too ill all the week to write you of your manuscripts, or even read them understandingly. I think "Honest Andrew's Prayer" far and away the best. _It_ is witty--the others hardly more than earnest, and not, in my judgment, altogether fair. But then you know you and I would hardly be likely to agree on a point of that kind,--I refuse my sympathies in some directions where I extend my sympathy--if that is intelligible. You, I think, have broader sympathies than mine--are not only sorry for the Homestead strikers (for example) but approve them. I do not. But we are one in detesting their oppressor, the smug-wump, Carnegie. If you had not sent "Honest Andrew's Prayer" elsewhere I should try to place it here. It is so good that I hope to see it in print. If it is rejected please let me have it again if the incident is not then ancient history. I'm glad you like some things in my book. But you should not condemn me for debasing my poetry with abuse; you should commend me for elevating my abuse with a little poetry, here and there. I am not a poet, but an abuser--that makes all the difference. It is "how you look at it." But I'm still too ill to write. With best regards to all your family, I am sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.