For five years he followed these adventurous wanderings; then as suddenly as he had entered the life he deserted it, and, in 1860 the prodigal returned home to his father’s cabin in Oregon. In his right arm he carried a bullet, in his right thigh another, and on many parts of his body were the scars left by Indian arrows. Shortly after returning home he begun the study of law and was admitted to practice within a few months in Lane County, Oregon; but the gold fever or spirit of adventure took possession of him again and in 1861 we find him in the gold mines of Idaho; but the yellow metal did not come into his “Pan” sufficiently fast and he gave it up to become an express messenger in the mining district. A few months later he was back in Oregon where he started a Democratic Newspaper at Eugene City which he ran long enough to get acquainted with a poetical contributor, Miss Minnie Myrtle, whom he married in 1862――in his usual short-order way of doing things――after an acquaintance of three days. Where “Joaquin” Miller――for he was now called “Joaquin” after a Spanish brigand whom he had defended――got his education is a mystery; but through the years of wandering, even in boyhood, he was a rhymester and his verses now began to come fast in the columns of his paper. Illustration: JOAQUIN MILLER’S STUDY, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. In 1862, after his marriage he resumed the practice of law, and, in 1866, at the age of twenty-five, was elected Judge of Grant County. This position he held for four years during which time he wrote much poetry. One day with his usual “suddenness” he abandoned his wife and his country and sailed for London to seek a publisher. At first he was unsuccessful, and had to print a small volume privately. This introduced him to the friendship of English writers and his “Songs of the Sierras” was issued in 1871. Naturally these poems were faulty in style and called forth strong adverse criticism; but the tales they told were glowing and passionate, and the wild and adventurous life they described was a new revelation in the world of song, and, verily, whatever the austere critic said, “The common people heard him gladly” and his success became certain. Thus encouraged Miller returned to California, visited the tropics and collected material for another work which he published in London in 1873 entitled “Sunland Songs.” Succeeding, the “Songs of the Desert” appeared in 1875; “Songs of Italy” 1878; “Songs of the Mexican Seas” 1887. Later he has published “With Walker in Nicaragua” and he is also author of a play called “The Danites,” and of several prose works relating to life in the West among which are “The Danites in the Sierras,” “Shadows of Shasta” and ’49, or “The Gold-seekers of the Sierras.”