I'm sending you an odd thing by Eugene Wood, of Niagara Falls, where I met him two or three years ago. I'm sure you will appreciate it. The poor chap died the other day and might appropriately--as he doubtless will--lie in a neglected grave. You may return the book when you have read it enough. I'm confident you never heard of it. Enclosed is your sonnet, with a few suggestions of no importance. I had not space on it to say that the superfluity of superlatives noted, is accentuated by the words "west" and "quest" immediately following, making a lot of "ests." The verses are pleasing, but if any villain prefer them to "In Extremis" may he bite himself with a Snake! If you'll send me that shuddery thing on Fear--with the "clangor of ascending chains" line--and one or two others that you'd care to have in a magazine, I'll try them on Maxwell. I suspect he will fall dead in the reading, or possibly dislocate the jaw of him with a yawn, but even so you will not have written in vain. Have you tried anything on "Munsey"? Bob Davis is the editor, and we talked you over at dinner (where would you could have been). I think he values my judgment a little. * * * I wish I could be blown upon by your Carmel sea-breeze; the weather here is wicked! I don't even canoe. My "Cynic" book is due in October. Shall send it to you. Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE. [Washington, D. C., September 28, 1906.] DEAR GEORGE, Both your letters at hand. * * * * * Be a "magazine poet" all you can--that is the shortest road to recognition, and all our greater poets have travelled it. You need not compromise with your conscience, however, by writing "magazine poetry." You couldn't. What's your objection to * * *? I don't observe that it is greatly worse than others of its class. But a fellow who has for nigh upon twenty years written for yellow newspapers can't be expected to say much that's edifying on that subject. So I dare say I'm wrong in my advice about the _kind_ of swine for your pearls. There are probably more than the two kinds of pigs--live ones and dead ones. Yes, I'm a colonel--in Pennsylvania Avenue. In the neighborhood of my tenement I'm a Mister. At my club I'm a major--which is my real title by an act of Congress. I suppressed it in California, but couldn't here, where I run with the military gang. You need not blackguard your poem, "A Visitor," though I could wish you had not chosen blank verse. That form seems to me suitable (in serious verse) only to lofty, not lowly, themes. Anyhow, I always expect something pretty high when I begin an unknown poem in blank. Moreover, it is not your best "medium." Your splendid poem, "Music," does not wholly commend itself to me for that reason. May I say that it is a little sing-songy--the lines monotonously alike in their caesural pauses and some of their other features?