The Letters of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce

MY DEAR BLANCHE,

I accept your sympathy for my misfortunes in publishing. It serves me right (I don't mean the sympathy does) for publishing. I should have known that if a publisher cannot beat an author otherwise, or is too honest to do so, he will do it by failing. Once in London a publisher gave me a check dated two days ahead, and then (the only thing he could do to make the check worthless) -- ate a pork pie and died. That was the late John Camden Hotten, to whose business and virtues my present London publishers, Chatto and Windus, have succeeded. They have not failed, and they refuse pork pie, but they deliberately altered the title of my book.