Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/280

 Minnie Myrtle Miller, still in the prime of her powers, passed to the silent land.

Those who knew Joaquin Miller and his wife have pretty generally fostered the belief that she was almost as good a poet as he was. During the last 50 years she has retained this reputation through such heritage of praise from old admirers and without the actual confirmation of her poetry. Most of the Oregon libraries have had nothing at all by her, and even the large libraries have had only one complete poem and two fragments. Joaquin Miller himself, while mentioning the absence of qualities necessary for final success, paid high tribute to the promise of her talents and also estimated her as his equal, even his superior. In light of his own judgment of her work, he was cruelly guilty of destroying after her death, or at least of failing to preserve, a large quantity of her writings:

"There was quite half a trunk full of papers which she had brought and intrusted to me, some of them suggesting wonderful things, great thoughts and good and new; for much that she wrote—and maybe this is not great praise —was better than any writing of mine. But she lacked care and toil and sustained thought."

It must be owned that none of the Miller family- did anything to prolong the local fame which she had gained through her poems and bright prose in the Oregon papers before her marriage, while she was Minnie Myrtle Dyer at Port Orford; and had gained through her second period of writing in the 70's, after her divorce. A considerable amount of the work produced in the second period has been found and is given in this chapter, but her earlier work—which romantically attracted Miller—still remains lost. Very few of the