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“The Miraculous Guest”

Poe must have been more on Bierce’s mind while he was in England because this story draws upon “The Raven”, except instead of the bird it’s a curious old man who doesn’t care about the Derby in England or the fact that the narrator is writing about it. It goes so far as to use the meter and structure of one of the stanzas of the poem toward the end.

“The Failure of Hope & Wandel”

This is a short, epistolary comedy where two guys from Louisiana start up an ice shipping business with one of them headquartering in Chicago. This whole venture has a shelf-life, of course, and it founders about when you’d expect. I guess the comedy comes from how blissfully unaware these two capitalists are about their prospects.

“The Little Story”

I think but am not sure that this is a parody of “The Little Matchgirl”, rendered as a comedy where the man who wrote it reads it to the editor of “Fun”. I uncomfortably read sexualized undertones to the girl’s fantasies prior to a rain of food and flannel clothing that flattens her, good intentions to no avail as only the merchants benefit from the torrent of salable goods.

“The Lion at Bay”

This is another entry in the argumentative adventures of Don Grile, the scathing scholar of “A Literary Riot”. It’s a rambling monologue, full of belabored prose, that contains within it a story about a painter who pays a practical joke on his wife by setting up a full-size painting of a gorilla outside the window of the room she is taking a nap in.

“Mr. Swiddler’s Flip-Flap”

A frontier story where a man attempts to get a pardon to his friend who is scheduled to be executed for murdering a Native American. As the story goes on it comes out that the narrator once worked at a carnival as he is something of an acrobatic, which seems apropos of nothing but plays into Bierce’s twist ending.

“Mr. Masthead, Journalist”

Bierce skewers the incompetence of some journalists with this sketch, where the newly-hired man digs the paper’s backed candidate into a hole while making the opposing candidate look good. He is understandably terrified when the paper’s candidate pays the office a visit, visibly deflating.

“Perry Chumly’s Eclipse”

Two astronomers are using a spectroscope to look at a comet while a third relates a story about a fellow astronomer’s death that the other two have heard before, so they don’t pay him any attention. The punchline of the eclipse narrative is, uh, Not Great, but the boring dude getting the better of the two misguided spectroscope users is decent.

“A Shipwreckollection”

This would be right at home with all of the goofy-ass nautical grotesques from the second volume. It involves tossing passengers overboard to be devoured by sharks and seagulls as well as a bizarre aside that makes it clear that Bierce believed that audiences found cannibalism in Fiji to be comedy gold.

“A Literary Riot: Dod Grile Expressed His Disapproval of Personalities in Journalism”

This starts out with an apparently insane man raving around zoo animals and morphs into a Lemony Snicket-esque conflict between reader / writers. Imagine a furious but one-aided battle waged by puns, the first of which is a spin on the familiar Edgar Allan Poe pun, and you would still barely have an idea of what this is like.

“The Race at Left Bower”

Picture this: an American goads an Englishman into racing their horses against each other. It turns out that the American’s horse that he has been bragging on is a Lovecraftian nightmare that terrifies the other horse with its unearthly grin. This could be a Junji Ito manga story. I also wonder whether it is supposed to be a veiled political satire.

“Largo al Gapperino”

Bierce reflects on what was apparently a fad at the time—at least, enough of one to irk him—“posthumous” literature. The narrator can’t get anything published while alive because of this and elects to suicide after mailing out his prospects. Before he can, though, he finds out that the dead literally reanimate under the moonlight to write for magazines.

“The Late John Sweetbosh, Esq.”

Bierce appears to be making sport of a variety of contemporary writer in England. The narrator is attesting to his fond memory of the deceased but the amusing anecdotes reveal that Sweetbosh was Not a Great Person, idly stealing money from his friends; getting them to pay for things like his cabs; and, if the dog incident is to be believed, an bumbling idiot as well.

“The Wreck of the Orion”

Okay, I get this one. This is a travelogue of a fool who wants a sailing adventure… so he books passage on a canal boat. He is charged with romance and overreacts to the humdrum elements of canal life, eventually fleeing the boat and then trying to find high ground on the canal horse.

“Confessions of a Sad Dog”

This seems like a long, long way to go for a pun based on the initialized name of some sort of periodical—D.T.—and the source of the narrator’s delusions, diagnosed as delirium tremens. But, well, that’s Bierce.

“My Muse”

A captain of a shipping vessel has a steam-powered Calliope that he plays for his company an amusement and, as far as the citizens of Bullrush are concerned, that of others. The setup involves an island—Hardbake—whose major livestock consists of pigs. The well-intentioned payoff is a porcine flood of disaster that sweeps the island, plummeting to its death in the water on the other side.

“Little Larry”

Uh. I have no idea how the first part of this story relates to the second. It starts out with a delinquent youth narrative including a magic beanstalk before Larry is adrift in the cosmos. Somewhere in here it becomes a political cartoon where agents are off to corrupt San Francisco. Larry has a suddenly eloquent speech about politics; Bierce opines to destroy both political parties.

“Mr. Barcle’s Mill”

A goofy story where a man who owns a mill that manufactures gunpowder figures out the average time between its self-explosions and schemes to sell it before it “busts up”. If the idea of the mill exploding at the exact calculated moment of average seems ridiculous, well, the actual time of destruction is even more preposterous.

“The Evolution of a Story”

This is more of an exercise in story prompts. Bierce is having fun turning his metaphors and similes into the basis of the next paragraph, describing the allusions in literal details, whether it’s the sound of an infant being spanked or the piano that cannot hope for marriage. The story makes no sense; there is no narrative to follow. It was fun once I figured out its logic, though.

“Corrupting the Press”

On its face this story is about political parties bribing the press for positive coverage, but
Bierce’s point is that in order to be bribed, the press must be capable of being bought, at which point, what is to stop them from acting like a mafia that shakes down politicians for good coverage? And what guarantees that they back down after getting paid??

“Why I Am Not Editing ‘The Stinger’”

An epistolary comedy delivered via office communications. The editor printed a story defaming a man named Muskler and the libeled man arrives at the office with a gun and a bulldog, eager to talk to the editor. Naturally, the editor suddenly finds every excuse to avoid the building, seeing as how Muskler is encamped within his office.

“A Champion of the Sex”

A ridiculous character sketch about a compulsive liar who lies on behalf of any woman, even ones from 7,000 year-old legends. Bierce insinuates that this is because Moseley is covering for not knowing any women. This is less a misogynistic appeal and more a tale of braggadocios, false allyship, judging by the second story’s commandeered act of charity.

“Two Stories About Johnson”

Fun with one drunk person in particular. The first story is a practical joke where the drunk is turned out to the racetrack behind the house, with the prankster laying himself out on the road in front of Johnson so as to seem like the man is coming across multiple dead bodies. The second is an anecdote about that time a wild hog lay down next to Johnson and cost him most of a finger.

“Concerning Balloons”

A speaker who is in St. Louis but is engaged to speak in Chicago repurposes his speech, which originally slammed St. Louis and talked up Chicago, so that the speech is at Chicago’s expense instead. St. Louis finds out and, because the narrator is full of hot air, they send him up in a hot air balloon where it is implied that he died from, idk, exposure or dehydration.

“To Fiji and Return”

Grotesque where a man assists in shipping a ton of missionaries to Fiji, after which there are a cavalcade of jokes revolving around cannibalism. It starts out with the dad jokes of cannibalism, like the King asking the captain for “dinner”, which he knew to say that he would “dine”, and quickly falls apart from there. The captain eventually (knowingly) shares in a meal of his crew.

“Banking at Mexican Hill”

Um. Some dude on a ranch in California thinks that his dad is dead in the wilderness. His business partner—they have a bank—pays a visit and it turns out that he has brought an old man, who he found while traveling, to the ranch. The man’s Native American servant promptly tries to scalp the father. What? Am I to infer that Monkson had ordered the murder of his father previously??

“Authenticating a Ghost”

Another grotesque. A man dreams that his drinking buddy has died and then runs into his ghost. After partying for a while, he is resentful and wants something to prove its existence. How driving a nail through the ghost’s “heart” will do this is beyond me. When the spike hits, he finds out that he has just murdered his wife. He is relieved that the ghost was only a dream.

“The Dempsters”

This is a fast-paced grotesque with a high body-count where the death of one man results in the willed death of his entire family. Bierce takes it a step further by creating a character who is the author of the story and who, having no other way to escalate the narrative, commits suicide. Idk if that makes it more purely satirical; I would not have batted an eye at this in Volume II.

“A Remarkable Adventure”

Oooooookaaaaaay…?

This feels more like it belongs with the “grotesques” from the second volume. The narrator, traveling with some Native Americans, runs across an entire community in an “unexplored” region of America, including sassy sailors. It turns out that the lake is a mirage, but the woman who fell off the boat and drowned was…real? And… edible…?

“The Sanctity of an Oath”

I am confused by the framing story. I assume that Bierce is insinuating that swearing an oath on the Bible in a court of law is ultimately dependent on the person swearing it. The nested story is about character sketch of a man who would bet five dollars to the contrary of any and all offered opinions.

“Jeph Benedick’s Grandmother”

The author placed a lot of emphasis on Bierce as a savage satirist but the grotesqueries of the second collection were far more steeped in the sardonic than these humorous stories. This anecdote is about the narrator’s friend, Mr. Benedick, who has the driest delivery of humor ever to be found among the members of the human race.