Well, if you think a short preface by me preferable to the verses with my name, all right; I will cheerfully write it, and that will leave you free to honor your other friends if you care to. But those are great lines, and implying, as they do, all that a set preface could say, it seems to me that they ought to stand. * * * * * Maid Marian shall have the photograph. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [1321 Yale Street, Washington, D. C., March 1, 1903.] MY DEAR STERLING, You are a brick. You shall do as you will. My chief reluctance is that if it become known, or _when_ it becomes known, there may ensue a suspicion of my honesty in praising you and _your_ book; for critics and readers are not likely to look into the matter of dates. For your sake I should be sorry to have it thought that my commendation was only a log-rolling incident; for myself, I should care nothing about it. This eel is accustomed to skinning. It is not the least pleasing of my reflections that my friends have always liked my work--or me--well enough to want to publish my books at their own expense. Everything that I have written could go to the public that way if I would consent. In the two instances in which I did consent they got their money back all right, and I do not doubt that it will be so in this; for if I did not think there was at least a little profit in a book of mine I should not offer it to a publisher. "Shapes of Clay" _ought_ to be published in California, and it would have been long ago if I had not been so lazy and so indisposed to dicker with the publishers. Properly advertised--which no book of mine ever has been--it should sell there if nowhere else. Why, then, do _I_ not put up the money? Well, for one reason, I've none to put up. Do you care for the other reasons? But I must make this a condition. If there is a loss, _I_ am to bear it. To that end I shall expect an exact accounting from your Mr. Wood, and the percentage that Scheff. purposes having him pay to me is to go to you. The copyright is to be mine, but nothing else until you are entirely recouped. But all this I will arrange with Scheff., who, I take it, is to attend to the business end of the matter, with, of course, your assent to the arrangements that he makes. I shall write Scheff. to-day to go ahead and make his contract with Mr. Wood on these lines. Scheff. appears not to know who the "angel" in the case is, and he need not, unless, or until, you want him to. I've a pretty letter from Maid Marian in acknowledgment of the photograph. I shall send one to Mrs. Sterling at once, in the sure and certain hope of getting another. It is good of her to remember my existence, considering that your scoundrelly monopoly of her permitted us to meet so seldom. I go in for a heavy tax on married men who live with their wives.