The personality of Cincinnatus Heine Miller, better known as “Joaquin” Miller, is as picturesque as has been his career. In turn a miner, lawyer, express rider, editor, poet and newspaper man, Mr. Miller has amassed a fund of experiences such as rarely falls to the lot of the ordinary individual. That his literary gifts enable him to reproduce in vivid fashion many of these same happenings is a matter for self-congratulation on the part of the reading public. What is yet more fortunate is that he preserves in his poems the breath of the prairie, the air of the mountains and the “tang” of that west that is rapidly passing into nothingness. The poet was born in the Wabash district of Indiana, November 10, 1841. In 1850 his parents removed to Oregon, and there is but little doubt that the wild and beautiful scenery amid which he spent his childhood had had much to do with fostering his then undeveloped poetical instincts. When the famous rush of gold seekers to the Pacific coast took place in 1859, young Miller was among the Argonauts. He does not appear to have been particularly successful in his hunt for gold, and returned to Oregon in 1860. Then he began to study law, supporting himself in the meantime by acting as express rider in Idaho. In 1863 he started the Eugene (Ore.) Democratic Register, which, however, had a brief existence. Later he opened a law office in Canon City, and in 1866 went to London, where he remained until 1870. It was in that city that he published his first book of poems. It received a most favorable reception, and established him as a poet of a unique type and quality. Returning to this country, he did some years of newspaper work in Washington, D. C., but finally drifted back to the Pacific coast, and devoted himself entirely to literature. In 1897, acting as correspondent for the New York newspaper, he visited the Klondike to compare modern miners with those of ’59. Some of his best known books of poems are Songs of the Sierras, Pacific Palms, The One Fair Woman, Songs of the Sunland, etc. He is also a playwright. One of the most important and successful of his dramas is The Danites. He lives in a picturesque home, known as the Heights, at Oakland, California. HENRY VAN DYKE. “Life is an arrow; therefore you must know What mark to aim at and how to use the bow, Then draw it to the head and let it go.”