Much of Bierce's best work was done in those years in San Francisco. Through the columns of the _WASP_ and the _EXAMINER_ his wit played free; he wielded an extraordinary influence; his trenchant criticism made and unmade reputations--literary and otherwise. But this to Bierce was mostly "journalism, a thing so low that it cannot be mentioned in the same breath with literature." His real interest lay elsewhere. Throughout the early eighties he devoted himself to writing stories; all were rejected by the magazine editors to whom he offered them. When finally in 1890 he gathered these stories together into book form and offered them to the leading publishers of the country, they too, would have none of them. "These men," writes Mr. Bailey Millard, "admitted the purity of his diction and the magic of his haunting power, but the stories were regarded as revolting." At last, in 1891, his first book of stories, _Tales of Soldiers and Civilians_, saw the reluctant light of day. It had this for foreword: "Denied existence by the chief publishing houses of the country, this book owes itself to Mr. E. L. G. Steele, merchant, of this city, [San Francisco]. In attesting Mr. Steele's faith in his judgment and his friend, it will serve its author's main and best ambition." There is Biercean pugnacity in these words; the author flings down the gauntlet with a confident gesture. But it cannot be said that anything much happened to discomfit the publishing houses of little faith. Apparently, Bierce had thought to appeal past the dull and unjust verdict of such lower courts to the higher tribunal of the critics and possibly an elect group of general readers who might be expected to recognize and welcome something rare. But judgment was scarcely reversed. Only a few critics were discerning, and the book had no vogue. When _The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter_ was published by F. J. Schulte and Company, Chicago, the next year, and _Can Such Things Be_ by The Cassell Publishing Company, the year following, a few enthusiastic critics could find no words strong enough to describe Bierce's vivid imagination, his uncanny divination of atavistic terrors in man's consciousness, his chiseled perfection of style; but the critics who disapproved had even more trouble in finding words strong enough for their purposes and, as before, there was no general appreciation.