{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/a-controversialist",
 "title": "A Controversialist",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "book_slug": "black-beetles-in-amber",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 32,
 "container": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1892,
  "venue": "Black Beetles in Amber (1892)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
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  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier"
  ]
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  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
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  [
   {
    "text": "I’ve sometimes wished that Ingersoll were wise",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hold his tongue, nor rail against the skies;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For when he’s made a point some pious dunce",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Like Bartlett of the Bulletin “replies.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I brandish no iconoclastic fist,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor enter the debate an atheist;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But when they say there is a God I ask",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Why Bartlett, then, is suffered to exist.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Even infidels that logic might resent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Saying: “There’s no place for his punishment",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That’s worse than earth.” But humbly I submit",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "That he’s himself a hell wherever sent.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}