Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

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HOMICIDE, n. – The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another‌—‌the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

–THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY

When Ambrose Bierce heard of the first Morton Street Slasher murder, he said, “It appears there is a fellow who dislikes women more than I do.”

On certain subjects he was so sarcastic that it was plain mean. His eyes got small under shaggy eyebrows and his mouth twisted beneath his fair mustache, and he would say something scurrilous about women or women poets or preachers or the SP Railroad.

He was my hero then. I’d always had to wince when I heard people carry on in a manner that seemed a fraud to me, on the subjects of religion, or the pure goodness of poor folk, or their sainted mother, or someone hailed a hero on not much grounds. Bierce hated fraud right to the bone. When I’d quit the Fire Department for a job assisting Dutch John, the printer of The Hornet, I had in mind becoming a journalist like Bierce. I’d had a good education from the Christian Brothers in Sacramento, and I’d read a library of books. What other training could be necessary? Being a famous journalist seemed a fine way to make a living, and there was some tone to it, too: people greeting you on the street and calling out they’d liked your last piece or go-it after the Railroad some more.

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