Excerpt from The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 4: Shapes of Clay In arranging these verses for publication I have thought it needless to classify them as serious, comic, senti mental, satirical, and so forth. I do the reader the honor to think that he will readily discern the character of what he is reading, and I entertain the h0pe that his mood will accommodate itself without disappointment to that of his author. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.