Explore "The Letters of Ambrose Bierce" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
MY DEAR GEORGE,
Thank you so much for the books and the inscription -- which (as do all other words of praise) affects me with a sad sense of my shortcomings as writer and man. Things of that kind from too partial friends point out to me with a disquieting significance what I ought to be; and the contrast with what I am hurts. Maybe you feel enough that way sometimes to understand. You are still young enough to profit by the pain; "my" character is made -- "my" opportunities are gone. But it does not greatly matter -- nothing does. I have some little testimony from you and Scheff and others that I have not lived altogether in vain, and I know that I have greater satisfaction in my slight connection with your and their work than in my own. Also a better claim to the attention and consideration of my fellow-men.