Explore "Indicted" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Dear Bruner, once we had a little talk / (That is to say, 'twas I did all the talking) / About the manner of your moral walk: / How devious the trail you made in stalking, / On level ground, your law-protected game -- / "Another's Dollar" is, I think, its name.
Your crooked course more recently is not / So blamable; for, truly, you have stumbled / On evil days; and 'tis your luckless lot / To traverse spaces (with a spirit humbled, / Contrite, dejected and divinely sad) / Where, 'tis confessed, the walking's rather bad.
Jordan, the song says, is a road (I thought / It was a river) that is hard to travel; / And Dublin, if you'd find it, must be sought / Along a highway with more rocks than gravel.
In difficulty neither can compete / With that wherein you navigate your feet.
As once George Gorham said of Pixley, so / I say of you: "The prison yawns before you, / The turnkey stalks behind!" Now will you go? / Or lag, and let that functionary floor you? / To change the metaphor -- you seem to be / Between Judge Wallace and the deep, deep sea!