1

“A

JOAQUIN MILLER.

POET without a Home" would not be an

inappropriate title for the present article. The other bards mentioned in this series have all domiciled themselves in comfortable quarters, ranging from aristocratic old mansions like Elmwood, or the Craigie House, to such snug suites of rooms as all but very rich New Yorkers must content themselves with. But Joaquin Miller comes pretty near being, like Goldsmith, a citizen of the world. The other day he was praising the gentle temper and kindly modesty of Mr. Longfellow, and suddenly said:

"What a home he has! How I envy him, I who

have no home!

How I long for a home, some place

I can call my own!"

The poet seldom speaks thus, contenting himself, as a rule, with the wild freedom which makes him happy under Shasta to-day and beside the Nile to morrow. Once, however, as he sat in a room in a New York hotel, whose luxuries were his only for the night, he pointed to a box of quills—real, old-fashioned goose-feathers — and said:

"There! that's all I have in the world, and all I want."

Omnia mea mecum porto, he might have said were he not, like Shakespeare, the master of small Latin ; for he can carry all his goods in his pocket, save, perhaps his pet saddle, which he would willingly transport down Broadway on his back.

The average reader hardly knows how many famous writers have become familiar under other Christian names than those their parents gave them. Mr. Charles John Hougham Dickens quietly dropped his two middle names, probably concluding that the product of the extremes was equal to that of the means; Mr. Cincinnatus Heine Miller, in like manner, concluded that he would rather celebrate one name than be celebrated by two, and so invented one for himself. He was born in one of the best parts of Indi

ana, the Wabash region, on November 10, 1841, and lived there for thirteen years, when Hulins Miller, his father, determined to go to Oregon with his family. That was long before the days of Pacific railroads, and even the weary wagon ride across the plains was neither safe nor expeditious. What with the monotonous drive across the level country, and the difficult passage of the Rocky Mountains, it was three months before the destination, the Willamette Valley, was reached. Of course as little baggage as possible was taken, but household stores and cooking utensils were a neccessity; and it not infrequently happened that prowling Indians, or equally covetous wild beasts, made a swoop for plunder on such little bands of pilgrims. The long solemn marches by day; the perilous encampment by night, when watch-fires were built to keep off animals, and muskets were loaded as a precaution against Indian invasion; the every-day companionship of all that is grand and inspiring in natural scenery all these things impress a boy quite as much as a man, and to their existence is doubtless due much of young Miller's later love of poetry. He was thirteen years old, an age, when, if ever, come romantic dreams of adventure and discovery. what other boys were eagerly reading in the novels of

But

James Fenimore Cooper, was present before Miller's very eyes.

There were seven in the family, four of the children being sons and one a daughter. Eugene City, in Lane County, Oregon, was their new home, but young Cincinnatus was not long content to remain in a region which to most would have seemed sufficiently romantic. The California mining excitement had now been raging for five years, and thither went the lad to try his fortune as a gold-digger. He contrived to make money enough to pay his current expenses, and very likely had, with all the rest, his "flush" days and his months of deepest poverty.

He went back to Oregon in 1859 without the princely fortune he had pictured to himself in his dreams, and was soon stung by one of the most praiseworthy of ambitions, that of getting a little "booklearning." He was still a mere boy, only eighteen, and the books he studied were of an elementary description. It is hard for a lad who has been out in the world to content himself long with the restraints of a school-room, and Miller soon got out of that irksome place.

Artemus Ward once remarked of Chaucer that "he was a great poet, but he couldn't spell;" and we

shall not hurt Joaquin Miller's feelings if we say that both statements are true in his case. The poet, in fact, takes some pride in his phonetic disregard of current orthography, for, as he himself says, "you can't expect a fellow to write, and spell, and do everything."

Then followed a year as pony-express driver, in which the ordinary dangers of a teamster in the western wilds were aggravated by the fact that he must carry the United States mails, which were favorite prey both for Indians and whites. Back again in Eugene City, the miner, express-driver, and school-boy made his belated entry into literature by assuming the editorship of The Eugene City Review, to which he soon began to contribute poems signed "Joaquin,” a nickname he had brought home with him from California. The publication of this paper was stopped for political reasons. His habit of scribbling verse had been begun long before, but he printed nothing until he became satisfied that the public, that is, his public, would like it. Miller is a curious union of ut ter independence of, and of suitable deference to, the world at large. He writes what he must, and he prints what he chooses.

The poet's migrations were continued by a settlement at Canyon City, in Grant County, Oregon, where