You'll be glad to know that I'm having a good time here in the Catskills. I shall not go back so long as I can find an open hotel. * * * * * I should like to hear from you about our--or rather your--set in California, and especially about _you_. Do you still dally with the Muse? Enclosed you will find two damning evidences of additional incapacity. _Harper's_ now have "A Wine of Wizardry," and they too will indubitably turn it down. I shall then try _The Atlantic_, where it should have gone in the first place; and I almost expect its acceptance. I'm not working much--just loafing on my cottage porch; mixing an occasional cocktail; infesting the forests, knife in hand, in pursuit of the yellow-birch sapling that furnishes forth the walking stick like yours; and so forth. I knocked off work altogether for a month when Scheff came, and should like to do so for _you_. Are you never going to visit the scenes of your youth? * * * * * It is awfully sad--that latest visit of Death to the heart and home of poor Katie Peterson. Will you kindly assure her of my sympathy? Love to all the Piedmontese. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [Haines' Falls, Greene Co., N. Y., August 27, 1904.] MY DEAR GEORGE, First, thank you for the knife and the distinction of membership in the Ancient and Honorable Order of Knifers. I have made little use of the blades and other appliances, but the corkscrew is in constant use. I'm enclosing a little missive from the editor of _Harper's_. Please reserve these things awhile and sometime I may ask them of you to "point a moral or adorn a tale" about that poem. If we can't get it published I'd like to write for some friendly periodical a review of an unpublished poem, with copious extracts and a brief history of it. I think that would be unique. I find the pictures of Marian interesting, but have the self-denial to keep only one of them--the prettiest one of course. Your own is rather solemn, but it will do for the title page of the Testimony, which is still my favorite reading. Scheff showed me your verses on Katie's baby, and Katie has since sent them. They are very tender and beautiful. I would not willingly spare any of your "personal" poems--least of all, naturally, the one personal to me. Your success with them is exceptional. Yet the habit of writing them is perilous, as the many failures of great poets attest--Milton, for example, in his lines to Syriack Skinner, his lines to a baby that died a-bornin' and so forth. The reason is obvious, and you have yourself, with sure finger, pointed it out: "Remiss the ministry they bear Who serve her with divided heart; She stands reluctant to impart Her strength to purpose, end, or care."