going to press, it was discovered that the form was one page short. Having nothing else on hand, Harte had these rhymes set up. Instead of passing unnoticed, the poem was quoted everywhere; it swept the West and captivated the East. When his volume The Luck of Roaring Camp followed, Harte became not only a national but an international figure. In 1872 Harte, encouraged by his success, returned to his native East; in 1878 he went to Germany as consul. Two years later he was transferred to Scotland and, after five years there, went to London, where he remained the rest of his life. Harte's later period remains mysteriously shrouded. He never came back to America, not even for a visit; he separated himself from all the most intimate associations of his early life. He died, suddenly, at Camberley, England, May 6, 1902. Thar ain't no sense Jim was my chum That's why I come Down from up yar, Lookin' for Jim. Thank ye, sir! You Ain't of that crew,- Money? Not much: That ain't my kind; Rum? I don't mind, What's that you say? Sold! Why, you limb, You ornery, Derned, old, Long-legged Jim. PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES (Table Mountain, 1870) Which I wish to remark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar, Which the same I would rise to explain. Ah Sin was his name; And I shall not deny, In regard to the same, What that name might imply; But his smile, it was pensive and childlike, It was August the third, And quite soft was the skies; That Ah Sin was likewise ; Yet he played it that day upon William Which we had a small game, And Ah Sin took a hand: It was Euchre. The same He did not understand; But he smiled as he sat by the table, With a smile that was childlike and bland. Yet the cards they were stocked In a way that I grieve, And my feelings were shocked At the state of Nye's sleeve, Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, And the same with intent to deceive. But the hands that were played Were quite frightful to see, Till at last he put down a right bower Which the same Nye had dealt unto me! Then I looked up at Nye, And he gazed upon me; And he rose with a sigh, And said, "Can this be? We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"And he went for that heathen Chinee. In the scene that ensued I did not take a hand, But the floor it was strewed Like the leaves on the strand With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding, In the game "he did not understand." In his sleeves, which were long, He had twenty-four packs,- Yet I state but the facts; And we found on his nails, which were taper, Which is why I remark, And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar, Which the same I am free to maintain. Joaquin Miller Cincinnatus (Heine) Miller, or, to give him the name he adopted, Joaquin Miller, was born in 1841 of immigrant parents. As he himself writes, "My cradle was a covered wagon, pointed west. I was born in a covered wagon, I am told, at or about the time it crossed the line dividing Indiana from Ohio." At fifteen we find Miller living with the Indians as one of them; in 1859 (at the age of eighteen) he attends a missionschool "college" in Eugene, Oregon; between 1860 and 1865 he is express-messenger, editor of a pacifist newspaper that is suppressed for opposing the Civil War, lawyer and, occasionally, a poet. He holds a minor judgeship from 1866 to 1870. His first book (Specimens) appears in 1868, his second (Joaquin et al., from which he took his name) in 1869. No response-not even from "the bards of San Francisco Bay" to whom he has dedicated the latter volume. He is chagrined, discouraged, angry. He shakes the dust of America from his feet; goes to London; publishes a volume (Pacific Poems) at his own expense and overnight—becomes a sensation! His dramatic success in England is easily explained. He brought to the calm air of literary London, a breath of the |