The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-12-08

make his trinity of pain. He builds hor-
TOR upon horror, but leaves exposed the
scaffoldlng employed IN the construction.
ne has no imagination. He is therefore
nota story-teller, in literary sense. The
poverty of his intellect is exhibited in the
tact that the same idea, with very slight
variation, is made to serve as the ground
work for several of his tales. In a Horse
man IN the Sky" he makes son fire upon
his father In the affair at Coulter's
Notch" he makes an artillery officer shell
the home of his wife and daughter.
In IAN Occurrence at Owl Greek" there
is feeble attempt at sensatlonalism in the
effort to describe the feelings of hanged
man. There is neither art nor truth in
the relation. In zone of the Missing" the
author exhibits that kind of cleverness
which leaves the reader in the dark as to
his meaning. The story appears to be
stud of the sensations of man dying
horrible death, without any apparent
cause. In "a Tough Tussle" Federal
officer, who hates dead bodies, is made to
keep a lonely vigil by the side of one
already dead. Mr.. Bierce seems to see
some propriety in making the living officer
attack the dead BODY, and then fatally
attack himself, but he fails to do more
than disgust his reader. In another of
these blood-curdlfng stories, " A Watcher
by the Dead, doctor undertakes to play
the role of corpse with the view of scar
ing brother doctor. There is lively
struggle between The corpse and the
watcher; the latter is killed, but the corpse
escapes to become hopeless lunatic. 1t
is gruesome and clumsy narrative.
THE Man and the Snake is built on
similar lines and offers no relief from the
horrors first named. 1t is an attempt to
play the boyle with a stuffed snake.
The author repeats himself, or some one.
else, in "The Suitable Surroundings" A
very prolix ghost story, with a strong
flavor of chestnut The chief feature in
this story Is a short supply of candles.
The reader is done to death by the story
| itself, and that is what is very likely to
happen to anybody who reads Mr.. Bierce's
| tales.
(The author of BLACK Beetles presents
a curious psychological study, for he dis
| plays remarkable fondness for mad peo-
pie, which is painfully suggestive.)
''The Middle Toe of the Right Foot" a
duel to the death in a dark room, long
knives, scarcity of candles and no contest.
One man elopes with himself; the other
scares himself to death. 1 won't tire the
reader with any further reference to these
horrible tales of horror.
The analysis of the stories discloses the
narrowness of the authors ability. His
stock in trade consists of ''staring eyes"
''gouts of blood" "froth," saliva" i'm
aginary adversaries, dark rooms, an
overturned table, a half-burned candle and
a stuffed snake. With these cheap and
tawdry properties he works up a series of
melodramatic pictures full of horror.
am not surprised that the publishing
| houses refused to accept this hysterlcal
| hodge-podge.
Mr.. Bierce is not story-telIer, in a
literary sense. His style, to use his own
phrase, is bizarre, and he is curlously in
different as to his use of words. On page
% of his tales of SOLDIERS. etc." we read,
pains appeared to beat with
an inconceivably rapid periodicity," and in
the next sentence the same pains 'seem ed
like streams of pulsating fire." Pulsate
means to beat, to throb, to move with
rhythmical impulse. How fire can be said
to do this is not apparent.
On the same page we read of a man
swinging through unthinkable arcs of
oscillation, like a vast pendulum" A
pendulum describes arcs as it swings or
oscillates, but it does not swing through
the oscillation, nor oscillate through the
swinging. 1t swings or oscillates through
the air. If the 'arcs of oscillation" are
'unthinkable,' it is to be presumed that
the pendulum which describes them is
''unthinkable" also, and if the man re-
sembles the pendulum he too is "unthink-
able" Where the authors wits were when
he Renned this marvellous stupidity is not
evident.
But let US go back to "Pains appeared
to beat with an inconceiyably rapid period
icity." "Periodicity' is the habit of re-
curing or the tendency to recur at regu-
lar intervals. What an inconceivably
rapid habit of recurrence is I do not know
but [ suspect that it is not the habit that
is ''inconceivably rapid" but the recur-
renee, and so all this cumbrous "high-
falutin" resolves itself into plain English
as ''great rapidity." Fie, ie, Mr.. Bierce.
On page 46 mems faces are 'gouted with
red." Bierce meant "smeared with blood"
On page 48 they are ''freaked and macula-
ted with stains'' that is to say, they had
''dirty faces" On page 70 he says "a small
rap on the head incurred stimuli
taneously," etc. Only Mr.. Ambrose Bierce
can Incur rap" On page 86 he writes,
He resolved to meet his fate more
manly; this is clumsy beyond excuse
Bierce meant in manly manner, but
manly is an adjective. Mainly is the ad-
verb. On page ga the author introduces
an American officer, and describes him as
''famboyantly attired.' He meant us to
understand that the officer was in uniform.
He might just as well have said that he
was piebald 'possum from the painting
prairie. On page 96 we find this delicious
morsel: From a position of that compare
tive security, from which a civilian would
ascribe his escape to miracle, he may be
dispatched" etc. What does it all mean?
Whether the civilian would ascribe the
position or the security or the escape from
the position, or the escape from the secu-
rity to miracle, the puzzled reader is
unable to say. On page 155 the author
intimates that "a loss of which we wiU
never be conscious can be borne with COM
DOsure" Ordinary English scholars would