Thank you very much for the photograph. You are growing too infernally handsome to be permitted to go about unchained. If I had your "advantages" of youth and comeliness I'd go to the sheriff and ask him to lock me up. That would be the honorable thing for you to do, if you don't mind. God be with you--but inattentive. AMBROSE BIERCE. [Aurora, Preston Co., West Virginia, August 15, 1903.] DEAR STERLING, I fear that among the various cares incident to my departure from Washington I forgot, or neglected, to acknowledge the Joaquin Miller book that you kindly sent me. I was glad to have it. It has all his characteristic merits and demerits--among the latter, his interminable prolixity, the thinness of the thought, his endless repetition of favorite words and phrases, many of them from his other poems, his mispronunciation, his occasional flashes of prose, and so forth. Scheff tells me his book is out and mine nearly out. But what of yours? I do fear me it never will be out if you rely upon its "acceptance" by any American publisher. If it meets with no favor among the publisher tribe we must nevertheless get it out; and you will of course let me do what I can. That is only tit for tat. But tell me about it. I dare say Scheff, who is clever at getting letters out of me--the scamp!--has told you of my being up here atop of the Alleghenies, and why I _am_ here. I'm having a rather good time. * * * Can you fancy me playing croquet, cards, lawn--no, thank God, I've escaped lawn tennis and golf! In respect of other things, though, I'm a glittering specimen of the Summer Old Man. Did _you_ have a good time in the redwoods? Please present my compliments to Madame (and Mademoiselle) Sterling. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [Aurora, West Virginia, September 8, 1903.] DEAR STERLING, I return the verses with a few suggestions. I'm sorry your time for poetry is so brief. But take your pencil and figure out how much you would write in thirty years (I hope you'll live that long) at, say, six lines a day. You'll be surprised by the result--and encouraged. Remember that 50,000 words make a fairly long book. You make me shudder when you say you are reading the "Prattle" of years. I haven't it and should hardly dare to read it if I had. There is so much in it to deplore--so much that is not wise--so much that was the expression of a mood or a whim--so much was not altogether sincere--so many half-truths, and so forth. Make allowances, I beg, and where you cannot, just forgive.