Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/264

 rhymes set up, make a big book, and fire it right at the head of these stolid Britons."

A hundred copies of Pacific Poems were printed at his own expense. Several years ago, a Portland book collector found a local woman who owned a copy. She finally consented to trade it to him for Paisley shawl, which he was to buy new for her in New York City, and which he knew would cost about $45. When he returned she had died, he afterwards bought the books she left, but Pacific Poems was no longer among them! In the heydey of book prices another copy was listed at $800.

Songs of the Sierras published by a great London publishing house. Reviews praised him to the skies. He was famous.

Meanwhile, as the widening echoes of that fame reached Oregon, the women of Oregon, the Oregon newspapers, and, most of all, Minnie Myrtle Miller let the public know what kind of a person he really was. "...glory flooded from Europe and shame from the sensational branch of the press in the West."

1871- Back in San Francisco and Oregon.

1872 In San Francisco, in the fall of 1872, Minnie Myrtle Miller gave two lectures on his private life. The report of the second one, reprinted from the San Francisco Chronicle of November 13, was spread in two and a quarter columns over the front page of the Oregon State Journal of Eugene City, in the issue of November 23, 1872, the reporter's first paragraph being as follows:

"Mrs. Minnie Myrtle Miller delivered her second lecture on 'Joaquin Miller, the Poet and the Man' to an audience of about three hundred persons in Pacific Hall last evening. The lecture was delivered in a clear ringing tone, and abounded in most delicate satire. Her sarcastic allusions to her illustrious and romantic liege were highly appreciated by her hearers, and so sharp and cutting was the vein of wit and satire running all through it that the audience was kept in continual smiles and good humor. Punctually at 8 o'clock the lecturess emerged from the waiting-room and ascended the rostrum with a quick, decisive step. Her appearance was greeted with applause, which she acknowledged with a grateful bow. She was attired in a modest dress of black silk, with white lace mauve, and a delicate pink knot at her throat. Her hair fell in flowing curls down her back and shoulders and her hands were encased in white kid gloves."