I don't know why I've not written to you--that is, I don't know why God made me what I have the misfortune to be: a sufferer from procrastination. * * * * * I have read Mary Austin's book with unexpected interest. It is pleasing exceedingly. You may not know that I'm familiar with the _kind_ of country she writes of, and reading the book was like traversing it again. But the best of her is her style. That is delicious. It has a slight "tang" of archaism--just enough to suggest "lucent sirups tinct with cinnamon," or the "spice and balm" of Miller's sea-winds. And what a knack at observation she has! Nothing escapes her eye. Tell me about her. What else has she written? What is she going to write? If she is still young she will do great work; if not--well, she _has_ done it in that book. But she'll have to hammer and hammer again and again before the world will hear and heed. As to me I'm pot-boiling. My stuff in the N. Y. American (I presume that the part of it that you see is in the Examiner) is mere piffle, written without effort, purpose or care. My department in the Cosmopolitan is a failure, as I told Millard it would be. It is impossible to write topical stuff for a magazine. How can one discuss with heart or inspiration a thing that happens two months or so before one's comments on it will be read? The venture and the title were Hearst's notion, but the title so handicaps me that I can do nothing right. I shall drop it. I've done three little stories for the March number (they may be postponed) that are ghastly enough to make a pig squeal. * * * * * Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [Washington, D. C., March 12, 1906.] MY DEAR GEORGE, First, about the "Wine," I dislike the "privately printed" racket. Can you let the matter wait a little longer? Neale has the poem, and Neale is just now inaccessible to letters, somewhere in the South in the interest of his magazine-that-is-to-be. I called when in New York, but he had flown and I've been unable to reach him; but he is due here on the 23rd. Then if his mag is going to hold fire, or if he doesn't want the poem for it, let Robertson or Josephare have a hack at it. Barr is amusing. I don't care to have a copy of his remarks. About the pirating of my stories. That is a matter for Chatto and Windus, who bought the English copyright of the book from which that one story came. I dare say, though, the publication was done by arrangement with them. Anyhow my interests are not involved. I was greatly interested in your account of Mrs. Austin. She's a clever woman and should write a good novel--if there is such a thing as a good novel. I won't read novels.