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Bierce, a writer of many crotchets

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From: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 19860309
Author:James J. Kilpatrick

Ambrose Bierce, when he is remembered at all, probably is best remembered for The Devil's Dictionary, published in 1906. Here he defined a bore as "a person who talks when you wish him to listen." A lawsuit, he said, is "a machine which you go into as a pig and come out as a sausage."

Born in Ohio in 1842, Bierce fought in the Civil War, wrote short stories, worked on Hearst papers and curiously disappeared in Mexico in 1913. He was presumed dead a year later. Four years before he vanished, Bierce published a slim volume, Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Joe Bryan ...

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