The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 30

Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Army and Navy Club, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., November 11, 1910.]

DEAR LORA,

It is nice to hear from you and learn that despite my rude and intolerant ways you manage to slip in a little affection for me--you and the rest of the folk. And really I think I left a little piece of my heart out there--mostly in Berkeley. It is funny, by the way, that in falling out of love with most of my old sweethearts and semi-sweethearts I should fall _in_ love with my own niece. It is positively scandalous!

I return Sloot's letter. It gave me a bit of a shock to have him say that he would probably never see me again. Of course that is true, but I had not thought of it just that way--had not permitted myself to, I suppose. And, after all, if things go as I'm hoping they will, Montesano will take me in again some day before he seems likely to leave it. We four may see the Grand Canon together yet. I'd like to lay my bones thereabout.

The garments that you persuaded me were mine are not. They are probably Sterling's, and he has probably d.a.m.ned me for stealing them.

I don't care; he has no right to dress like the "filthy rich." Hasn't he any "cla.s.s consciousness"? However, I am going to send them back to you by express. I'll mail you the paid receipt; so don't pay the charge that the company is sure to make. They charged me again for the two packages that you paid for, and got away with the money from the Secretary of my club, where they were delivered. I had to get it back from the delivery man at the cannon's mouth--34 calibre.

With love to Carlt and Sloots,

Affectionately yours, AMBROSE.

[The Army and Navy Club, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., November 14, 1910.]

DEAR LORA,

You asked me about the relative interest of Yosemite and the Grand Canon. It is not easy to compare them, they are so different. In Yosemite only the magnitudes are unfamiliar; in the Canon nothing is familiar--at least, nothing would be familiar to you, though I have seen something like it on the upper Yellowstone. The "color scheme" is astounding--almost incredible, as is the "architecture." As to magnitudes, Yosemite is nowhere. From points on the rim of the Canon you can see fifty, maybe a hundred, miles of it. And it is never twice alike. n.o.body can describe it. Of course you must see it sometime. I wish our Yosemite party could meet there, but probably we never will; it is a long way from here, and not quite next door to Berkeley and Carmel.

I've just got settled in my same old tenement house, the Olympia, but the club is my best address.

Affectionately, AMBROSE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., November 29, 1910.]

DEAR LORA,

Thank you very much for the work that you are doing for me in photography and china. I know it is great work. But take your time about it.

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving at Upshack. (That is my name for Sloots' place. It will be understood by anyone that has walked to it from Montesano, carrying a basket of grub on a hot day.)

I trust Sterling got his waistcoat and trousers in time to appear at his uncle's dinner in other outer garments than a steelpen coat. * * *

I am glad you like (or like to have) the books. You would have had all my books when published if I had supposed that you cared for them, or even knew about them. I am now encouraged to hope that some day you and Carlt and Sloots may be given the light to see the truth at the heart of my "views" (which I have expounded for half a century) and will cease to ally yourselves with what is most hateful to me, socially and politically. I shall then feel (in my grave) that perhaps, after all, I knew how to write. Meantime, run after your false fool G.o.ds until you are tired; I shall not believe that your hearts are really in the chase, for they are pretty good hearts, and those of your G.o.ds are nests of nastiness and heavens of hate.

Now I feel better, and shall drink a toddy to the tardy time when those whom I love shall not think me a perverted intelligence; when they shall not affirm my intellect and despise its work--confess my superior understanding and condemn all its fundamental conclusions.

Then we will be a happy family--you and Carlt in the flesh and Sloots and I in our bones.

My health is excellent in this other and better world than California.

G.o.d bless you.

AMBROSE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., December 22, 1910.]

DEAR CARLT,

You had indeed "something worth writing about"--not only the effect of the impenitent mushroom, but the final and disastrous overthrow of that ancient superst.i.tion, Sloots' infallibility as a mushroomer. As I had expected to be at that dinner, I suppose I should think myself to have had "a narrow escape." Still, I wish I could have taken my chance with the rest of you.

How would you like three weeks of nipping cold weather, with a foot of snow? That's what has been going on here. Say, tell Sloots that the front footprints of a rabbit-track

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rabbit tracks]

are made by the animal's hind feet, straddling his forelegs. Could he have learned that important fact in California, except by hearsay?

Observe (therefore) the superiority of this climate.

AMBROSE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., January 26, 1911.]

DEAR LORA,

I have just received a very affectionate letter from * * * and now know that I did her an injustice in what I carelessly wrote to you about her incivility to me after I had left her. It is plain that she did not mean to be uncivil in what she wrote me on a postal card which I did not look at until I was in the train; she just "didn't know any better." So I have restored her to favor, and hope that you will consider my unkind remarks about her as unwritten. Guess I'm addicted to going off at half-c.o.c.k anyhow.

Affectionately, AMBROSE.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., February 3, 1911.]

DEAR LORA,

I have the Yosemite book, and Miss Christiansen has the Mandarin coat.

I thank you very much. The pictures are beautiful, but of them all I prefer that of Nanny bending over the stove. True, the face is not visible, but it looks like you all over.

I'm filling out the book with views of the Grand Canon, so as to have my scenic treasures all together. Also I'm trying to get for you a certain book of Canon pictures, which I neglected to obtain when there. You will like it--if I get it.

Sometime when you have nothing better to do--don't be in a hurry about it--will you go out to Mountain View cemetery with your camera and take a picture of the grave of Elizabeth (Lily) Walsh, the little deaf mute that I told you of? I think the man in the office will locate it for you. It is in the Catholic part of the cemetery--St. Mary's. The name Lily Walsh is on the beveled top of the headstone which is shaped like this:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Headstone]

You remember I was going to take you there, but never found the time.