Here is the bit of blank. When are we to see the book? Needless question--when you can spare the money to pay for publication, I suppose, if by that time you are ambitious to achieve public inattention. That's my notion of encouragement--I like to cheer up the young author as he sets his face toward "the peaks of song." Say, that photograph of the pretty sister--the one with a downward slope of the eyes--is all faded out. That is a real misfortune: it reduces the sum of human happiness hereabout. Can't you have one done in fast colors and let me have it? The other is all right, but that is not the one that I like the better for my wall. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [The Olympia, Washington, D. C., December 16, 1901.] MY DEAR STERLING, I enclose the poems with a few suggestions. They require little criticism of the sort that would be "helpful." As to their merit I think them good, but not great. I suppose you do not expect to write great things every time. Yet in the body of your letter (of Oct. 22) you do write greatly--and say that the work is "egoistic" and "unprintable." If it[4] were addressed to another person than myself I should say that it is "printable" exceedingly. Call it what you will, but let me tell you it will probably be long before you write anything better than some--many--of these stanzas. [4] "Dedication" poem to Ambrose Bierce. You ask if you have correctly answered your own questions. Yes; in four lines of your running comment: "I suppose that I'd do the greater good in the long run by making my work as good poetry as possible." * * * * * Of course I deplore your tendency to dalliance with the demagogic muse. I hope you will not set your feet in the dirty paths--leading nowhither--of social and political "reform".... I hope you will not follow * * * in making a sale of your poet's birthright for a mess of "popularity." If you do I shall have to part company with you, as I have done with him and at least _one_ of his betters, for I draw the line at demagogues and anarchists, however gifted and however beloved. Let the "poor" alone--they are oppressed by nobody but God. Nobody hates them, nobody despises. "The rich" love them a deal better than they love one another. But I'll not go into these matters; your own good sense must be your salvation if you are saved. I recognise the temptations of environment: you are of San Francisco, the paradise of ignorance, anarchy and general yellowness. Still, a poet is not altogether the creature of his place and time--at least not of his to-day and his parish. By the way, you say that * * * is your only associate that knows anything of literature. She is a dear girl, but look out for her; she will make you an anarchist if she can, and persuade you to kill a President or two every fine morning. I warrant you she can pronounce the name of McKinley's assassin to the ultimate zed, and has a little graven image of him next her heart.