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 to be regarded as an authoritative man of letters; consequently he minimized his frontier upbringing and magnified his education and general culture. Furthermore, he ultimately desired to be regarded as devoutly American and as intensely pacifistic; consequently he touched very lightly in later years the period when he was a secessionist, he skilfully hinted here and there that the stories of his outlawry were mythical, and he worked over his poems, making great excisions and adding new passages, with the purpose of harmonizing them with his declaration that he would rather starve than be celebrated as the poetic glorifier of war. This was obviously a difficult task in the case of the bloody and imperialistic career of Walker.

In the summer of 1861 Miller began other interesting adventures which are better attested. At this time he was riding Mossman and Miller's pony express, carrying letters and gold dust between Walla