Angwin,March 26,1893.
I am very glad indeed to get the good account of Leigh that you give me. I've feared that he might be rather a bore to you, but you make me easy on that score. Also I am pleased that you think he has a sufficient "gift" to do something in the only direction in which he seems to care to go.
He is anxious to take the place at the Examiner , and his uncle thinks that would be best if they will give it him. I'm a little reluctant for many reasons, but there are considerations some of them going to the matter of character and disposition which point to that as the best arrangement. The boy needs discipline, control, and work. He needs to learn by experience that life is not all beer and skittles. Of course you can't quite know him as I do. As to his earning anything on the Examiner or elsewhere, that cuts no figure he'll spend everything he can get his fingers on anyhow; but I feel that he ought to have the advantage of a struggle for existence where the grass is short and the soil stony.
Well, I shall let him live down there somehow, and see what can be done with him. There's a lot of good in him, and a lot of the other thing, naturally.
I hope Hume has, or will, put you in authority in the Post and give you a decent salary. He seems quite enthusiastic about the Post and about you.
With sincere regards to Mrs. Partington and all the Partingtonettes, I am very truly yours, Ambrose Bierce.
Angwin,April 10,1893.
If you are undertaking to teach my kid (which, unless it is entirely agreeable to you, you must not do) I hope you will regard him as a pupil whose tuition is to be paid for like any other pupil. And you should, I think, name the price. Will you kindly do so?
Another thing. Leigh tells me you paid him for something he did for the Wave . That is not right. While you let him work with you, and under you, his work belongs to you is a part of yours. I mean the work that he does in your shop for the Wave .
I don't wish to feel that you are bothering with him for nothing will you not tell me your notion of what I should pay you?
I fancy you'll be on the Examiner pretty soon if you wish.
With best regards to your family I am sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
Angwin,April 10,1893.
As I was writing to your father I was, of course, strongly impressed with a sense of you ; for you are an intrusive kind of creature, coming into one's consciousness in the most lawless way Phyllis-like. (Phyllis is my "type and example" of lawlessness, albeit I'm devoted to her a Phyllistine, as it were.)
Leigh sends me a notice (before the event) of your concert. I hope it was successful. Was it?
It rains or snows here all the time, and the mountain struggles in vain to put on its bravery of leaf and flower. When this kind of thing stops I'm going to put in an application for you to come up and get your bad impressions of the place effaced. It is insupportable that my earthly paradise exist in your memory as a "bad eminence," like Satan's primacy.
I'm sending you the New England Magazine perhaps I have sent it already and a Harper's Weekly with a story by Mrs. * * *, who is a sort of pupil of mine. She used to do bad work does now sometimes; but she will do great work by-and-by.
I wish you had not got that notion that you cannot learn to write. You see I'd like you to do some art work that I can
understand and enjoy. I wonder why it is that no note or combination of notes can be struck out of a piano that will touch me give me an emotion of any kind. It is not wholly due to my ignorance and bad ear, for other instruments the violin, organ, zither, guitar, etc., sometimes affect me profoundly. Come, read me the riddle if you know. What have I done that I should be inaccessible to your music? I know it is good; I can hear that it is, but not feel that it is. Therefore to me it is not.
Now that, you will confess, is a woeful state "most tolerable and not to be endured." Will you not cultivate some art within the scope of my capacity? Do you think you could learn to walk on a wire (if it lay on the ground)? Can you not ride three horses at once if they are suitably dead? Or swallow swords? Really, you should have some way to entertain your uncle.
True, you can talk, but you never get the chance; I always "have the floor." Clearly you must learn to write, and I mean to get Miller to teach you how to be a poet.
I hope you will write occasionally to me, letter-writing is an art that you do excel in as I in "appreciation" of your excellence in it.
Do you see my boy? I hope he is good, and diligent in his work.
With good will to all your people particularly Phyllis I am sincerely your friend, Ambrose Bierce.
Angwin, Calif.,April 16,1893.
I think you wrong. On your own principle, laid down in your letter, that "every man has a right to the full value of his labor" pardon me, good Englishman, I meant "laboUr" you have a right to your wage for the labor of teaching Leigh. And what work would he get to do but for you?