One Kind of Officer. Ambrose Bierce

      

      One Kind of Officer

      By

      Ambrose Bierce

      First published in the San Francisco

      Examiner, January 1, 1893.

      Included in Can Such Things Be? (1893).

      Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

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      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Contents

      I - OF THE USES OF CIVILITY

      II - UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES MEN DO NOT WISH TO BE SHOT

      III - HOW TO PLAY THE CANNON WITHOUT NOTES

      IV - TO INTRODUCE GENERAL MASTERSON

      V - HOW SOUNDS CAN FIGHT SHADOWS

      VI - WHY, BEING AFFRONTED BY A, IT IS NOT BEST TO AFFRONT B

      Ambrose Bierce

      Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born in Meigs County, Ohio, United States in 1842. He was the tenth of thirteen children, and left home aged fifteen to become a ‘printer’s devil’ (a printing apprentice) at a small Ohio newspaper. Bierce fought in the American Civil War, working as a topographical engineer and even reaching the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army to settle in San Francisco. During the 1870s and 1880s, he worked on a variety of newspapers, even spending three years in England, and famously helped quash a bill which would have put the cost of the First Transcontinental Railroad on the American people instead of the railroad companies.

      Through his newspaper output – including one of the first regular columns in William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner – Bierce developed a famous reputation for searing criticism and acerbic wit, even earning the nickname ‘Bitter Bierce’. His satirical reference book, The Devil’s Dictionary, which lampooned cant and political doublespeak – “Corporation (n.) An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility”

      – remains widely read today. However, Bierce is critically best remembered for his fiction. Indeed, many of his short stories – such as ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’, ‘The Boarded Window’, ‘Killed at Resaca’ and ‘Chickamauga’, all of which are penned in ‘Pure English’ – are held among the best of the 19th century. Bierce’s writings are also generally regarded as some of the best war writings of all time.

      Bierce’s death was a mysterious one, which continues to intrigue people to this day: In October 1913, aged 71, Bierce left Washington, D.C., for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. He got as far as the Mexican city of Chihuahua, where he wrote a letter to a close friend, dated 26th December, 1913, in which he said “I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.” After this he vanished, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history.

      I

      OF THE USES OF CIVILITY

      “Captain Ransome, it is not permitted to you to know anything. It is sufficient that you obey my order—which permit me to repeat. If you perceive any movement of troops in your front you are to open fire, and if attacked hold this position as long as you can. Do I make myself understood, sir?”

      “Nothing could be plainer. Lieutenant Price,”—this to an officer of his own battery, who had ridden up in time to hear the order—”the general’s meaning is clear, is it not?”

      “Perfectly.”

      The lieutenant passed on to his post. For a moment General Cameron and the commander of the battery sat in their saddles, looking at each other in silence. There was no more to say; apparently too much had already been said. Then the superior officer nodded coldly and turned his horse to ride away. The artillerist saluted slowly, gravely, and with extreme formality. One acquainted with the niceties of military etiquette would have said that by his manner he attested a sense of the rebuke that he had incurred. It is one of the important uses of civility to signify resentment.

      When the general had joined his staff and escort, awaiting him at a little distance, the whole cavalcade moved off toward the right of the guns and vanished in the fog. Captain Ransome was alone, silent, motionless as an equestrian statue. The gray fog, thickening every moment, closed in about him like a visible doom.