in hunting, mining, or exploring, as frequently occurs. Would the bed-pan suggestion have come to you? Did it come to you when you read of the slow, but not uniform, starvation of Greeley's party in the arctic? Of course not. Then it is a matter, not of bed-pans, but of sex-exposure (unauthorized by the church), of prudery of that artificial thing, the "sense of shame," of which the great Greeks knew nothing; of which the great Japanese know nothing; of which Art knows nothing. Dear Doctor, do you really put trousers on your piano-legs? Does your indecent intimacy with your mirror make you blush?
There, there's the person whom I've been waiting for (I'm to take her to dinner, and I'm not married to even so much of her as her little toe) has come; and until you offend again, you are immune from the switch. May all your brother Philistines have to "Kiss the place to make it well."
Pan is dead! Long live Bed-Pan!
Yours ever, Ambrose Bierce.
Washington,February 17,1901.
I send back the poems, with a few suggestions. You grow great so rapidly that I shall not much longer dare to touch your work. I mean that.
Your criticisms of Stedman's Anthology are just. But equally just ones can be made of any anthology. None of them can suit any one. I fancy Stedman did not try to "live up" to his standard, but to make representative , though not always the best , selections. It would hardly do to leave out Whitman, for example. We may not like him; thank God, we don't; but many others the big fellows too do; and in England he is thought great. And then Stedman has the bad luck to know a lot of poets personally many bad poets. Put yourself in his place. Would you leave out me if you honestly thought my work bad?
In any compilation we will all miss some of our favorites and find some of the public's favorites. You miss from Whittier "Joseph Sturge" I the sonnet "Forgiveness," and so forth. Alas, there is no universal standard!
Thank you for the photographs. Miss * * * is a pretty girl, truly, and has the posing instinct as well. She has the place of honor on my mantel. * * * But what scurvy knave has put the stage-crime into her mind? If you know that life as I do you will prefer that she die, poor girl.
It is no trouble, but a pleasure, to go over your verses I am as proud of your talent as if I'd made it.
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
About the rhymes in a sonnet:
There are good reasons for preferring the regular Italian form created by Petrarch who knew a thing or two; and sometimes good reasons for another arrangement of the sestet rhymes. If one should sacrifice a great thought to be like Petrarch one would not resemble him. A. B.
Washington, D. C.,May 2,1901.
I am sending to the "Journal" your splendid poem on Memorial Day. Of course I can't say what will be its fate. I am not even personally acquainted with the editor of the department to which it goes. But if he has not the brains to like it he is to send it back and I'll try to place it elsewhere. It is great great! the loftiest note that you have struck and held .
Maybe I owe you a lot of letters. I don't know my correspondence all in arrears and I've not the heart to take it up.
Thank you for your kind words of sympathy. I'm hit harder than any one can guess from the known facts am a bit broken and gone gray of it all.
But I remember you asked the title of a book of synonyms. It is "Roget's Thesaurus," a good and useful book.
The other poems I will look up soon and consider. I've made no alterations in the "Memorial Day" except to insert the omitted stanza.
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
Washington,May 9,1901.
I send the poems with suggestions. There's naught to say about 'em that I've not said of your other work. Your "growth in grace" (and other poetic qualities) is something wonderful. You are leaving my other "pupils" so far behind that they are no longer "in it." Seriously, you "promise" better than any of the new men in our literature and perform better than all but Markham in his lucid intervals, alas, too rare.
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
Washington,May 22,1901.
I enclose a proof of the poem all marked up. The poem was
offered to the Journal, but to the wrong editor. I would not offer it to him in whose department it could be used, for he once turned down some admirable verses of my friend Scheffauer which I sent him. I'm glad the Journal is not to have it, for it now goes into the Washington Post and the Post into the best houses here and elsewhere a good, clean, unyellow paper. I'll send you some copies with the poem.
I think my marks are intelligible I mean my re marks. Perhaps you'll not approve all, or anything, that I did to the poem; I'll only ask you to endure. When you publish in covers you can restore to the original draft if you like. I had not time (after my return from New York) to get your approval and did the best and the least I could.
Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.