Ambrose Bierce 
Can Such Things Be? 

Ambrose Bierce never owned a horse, a carriage, or a car; he was a renter who never owned his own home. He was a man on the move, a man who traveled light: and in the end he rode, with all of his possessions, on a rented horse into the Mexican desert to join Pancho Villa — never to return. Can Such Things Be? Once William Randolph Hearst — Bierce’s employer, who was bragging about his own endless collections of statuary, art, books, tapestries, and, of course real estate like Hearst Castle — once William Randolph Hearst asked Bierce what he collected. Bierce responded, smugly: ‘I collect words. And ideas. Like you, I also store them. But in the reservoir of my mind. I can take them out and display them at a moment’s notice. Eminently portable, Mr. Hearst. And I don’t find it necessary to show them all at the same time.’ Such things ‘can’ be. Twenty-four tales of the weird by Ambrose Bierce, renowned master of the macabre