The Letters of Ambrose Bierce Part 6

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Angwin, March 18, 1893.]

MY DEAR BLANCHE,

It is good to have your letters again. If you will not let me teach you my trade of writing stories it is right that you practice your own of writing letters. You are mistress of that. Byron's letters to Moore are dull in comparison with yours to me. Some allowance, doubtless, must be made for my greater need of your letters than of Byron's. For, truth to tell, I've been a trifle dispirited and noncontent. In that mood I peremptorily resigned from the _Examiner_, for one thing--and permitted myself to be coaxed back by Hearst, for another. My other follies I shall not tell you. * * *

We had six inches of snow up here and it has rained steadily ever since--more than a week. And the fog is of superior opacity--quite peerless that way. It is still raining and fogging. Do you wonder that your unworthy uncle has come perilously and alarmingly near to loneliness? Yet I have the companionship, at meals, of one of your excellent s.e.x, from San Francisco. * * *

Truly, I should like to attend one of your at-homes, but I fear it must be a long time before I venture down there again. But when this brumous visitation is past I can _look_ down, and that a.s.sists the imagination to picture you all in your happy (I hope) home. But if that woolly wolf, Joaquin Miller, doesn't keep outside the fold I _shall_ come down and club him soundly. I quite agree with your mother that his flattery will spoil you. You said I would spoil Phyllis, and now, you bad girl, you wish to be spoiled yourself. Well, you can't eat four Millerine oranges.--My love to all your family.

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Angwin, March 26, 1893.]

MY DEAR PARTINGTON,

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 gra.s.s 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.]

MY DEAR PARTINGTON,

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.]

MY DEAR BLANCHE,

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.

You must write to me or I shall withdraw my avuncular relation to you.

With good will to all your people--particularly Phyllis--I am sincerely your friend,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Angwin, Calif., April 16, 1893.]

MY DEAR PARTINGTON,

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 labo_u_r of teaching Leigh. And what work would _he_ get to do but for you?

I can't hold you and inject shekels into your pocket, but if the voice of remonstrance has authority to enter at your ear without a ticket I pray you to show it hospitality.

Leigh doubtless likes to see his work in print, but I hope you will not let him put anything out until it is as good as he can make it--nor then if it is not good _enough_. And that whether he signs it or not. I have talked to him about the relation of conscience to lab-work, but I don't know if my talk all came out at the other ear.

O--that bad joke o' mine. Where do you and Richard expect to go when death do you part? You were neither of you present that night on the dam, nor did I know either of you. Blanche, thank G.o.d, retains the old-time reverence for truth: it was to her that I said it. Richard evidently dreamed it, and you--you've been believing that confounded _Wave_! Sincerely yours,

AMBROSE BIERCE.

[Angwin, April 18, 1893.]