Yes, you can republish the Memorial Day poem without the _Post's_ consent--could do so in "book form" even if the _Post_ had copyrighted it, which it did not do. I think the courts have held that in purchasing work for publication in his newspaper or magazine the editor acquires no right in it, _except for that purpose_. Even if he copyright it that is only to protect him from other newspapers or magazines; the right to publish in a book remains with the author. Better ask a lawyer though--preferably without letting him know whether you are an editor or an author. I ought to have answered (as well as able) these questions before, but I have been ill and worried, and have written few letters, and even done little work, and that only of the pot-boiling sort. My daughter has recovered and returned to Los Angeles. Please thank Miss * * * for the beautiful photographs--I mean for being so beautiful as to "take" them, for doubtless I owe their possession to you. I wrote Doyle about you and he cordially praised your work as incomparably superior to his own and asked that you visit him. He's a lovable fellow and you'd not regret going to Santa Cruz and boozing with him. Thank you for the picture of Grizzly and the cub of him. Sincerely yours, with best regards to the pretty ever-so-much-better half of you, AMBROSE BIERCE. P.S. * * * * * * * * * * * [The Olympia, Washington, D. C., March 15, 1902.] MY DEAR STERLING, Where are you going to stop?--I mean at what stage of development? I presume you have not a "whole lot" of poems really writ, and have not been feeding them to me, the least good first, and not in the order of their production. So it must be that you are advancing at a stupendous rate. This last[5] beats any and all that went before--or I am bewitched and befuddled. I dare not trust myself to say what I think of it. In manner it is great, but the greatness of the theme!--that is beyond anything. [5] "The Testimony of the Suns." It is a new field, the broadest yet discovered. To paraphrase Coleridge, You are the first that ever burst Into that silent [unknown] sea--