Correction. Bierce never wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. In fact. Bierce heaped scorn on the Chronicle's publisher, Mike de Young, who had political ambitions. In Bierce's collection of doggerel, "Black Beatles in Amber," he writes "To An Aspirant," which contains the lines: "What! you a Senator? - you, Mike de Young? / Still reeking of the gutter whence you sprung?"