Thank you for "A Wine of Wizardry"--amended. It seems to me that the fake dictum of "Merlin-sage" (I don't quite perceive the necessity of the hyphen) is better than the hackneyed Scriptural quotation. It is odd, but my recollection is that it was the "sick enchantress" who cried "unto Betelgeuse a mystic word." Was it not so in the copy that I first had, or do I think so merely because the cry of one is more lone and awful than the cry of a number? I am still of the belief that the poem should have at least a few breaks in it, for I find myself as well as the public more or less--I, doubtless, less than the public--indisposed to tackle solid columns of either verse or prose. I told you this poem "took away one's breath,"--give a fellow, can't you, a chance to recover it now and again. "Space to breathe, how short soever." Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done, on earth as it is in San Francisco. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [Washington, D. C., May 11, 1904.] DEAR GEORGE, To begin at the beginning, I shall of course be pleased to meet Josephare if he come this way; if only to try to solve the problem of what is in a fellow who started so badly and in so short a time was running well, with a prospect of winning "a place." Byron, you know, was the same way and Tennyson not so different. Still their start was not so bad as Josephare's. I freely confess that I thought him a fool. It is "one on me." * * * * * I wonder if a London house would publish "Shapes of Clay." Occasionally a little discussion about me breaks out in the London press, blazes up for a little while and "goes up in smoke." I enclose some evidences of the latest one--which you may return if you remember to do so. The letter of "a deeply disappointed man" was one of rollicking humor suggested by some articles of Barr about me and a private intimation from him that I should publish some more books in London. Yes, I've dropped "The Passing Show" again, for the same old reason--wouldn't stand the censorship of my editor. I'm writing for the daily issues of The American, mainly, and, as a rule, anonymously. It's "dead easy" work. * * * * * It is all right--that "cry unto Betelgeuse"; the "sick enchantress" passage is good enough without it. I like the added lines of the poem. Here's another criticism: The "Without" and "Within," beginning the first and third lines, respectively, _seem_ to be antithetic, when they are not, the latter having the sense of "into," which I think might, for clearness, be substituted for it without a displeasing break of the metre--a trochee for an iambus.