ed from California her most
picturesque figure. In his three-score and twelve years he found wide
experience, and while his garb and habits were somewhat theatrical he
was a strong character and a poet of power. In some respects he was more
like Walt Whitman than any other American poet, and in vigor and grasp
was perhaps his equal. Of California authors he is the last of the
acknowledged leading three, Harte and Clemens completing the group. For
many years he lived with his wife and daughter at "The Heights," in the
foothills back of Oakland, writing infrequently, but with power and
insight. His "Columbus" will probably be conceded to be his finest poem,
and one of the most perfect in the language. He held his faculties till
the last, writing a few days before his death a tender message of faith
in the eternal.

With strong unconventionality and a somewhat abrupt manner, he was
genial and kindly in his feelings, with warm affections and great
companionability.

An amusing incident of many years ago comes back to freshen his memory.
An entertainment of a social character was given at the Oakland
Unitarian church, and when my turn came for a brief paper on wit and
humor I found that Joaquin Miller sat near me on the platform. As an
illustration of parody, bordering on burlesque, I introduced a Miller
imitation--the story of a frontiersman on an Arizona desert accompanied
by a native woman of "bare, brown beauty," and overtaken by heat so
intense that but one could live, whereupon, to preserve the superior
race, he seized a huge rock and

"Crushed with fearful blow
Her well-poised head."

It was highly audacious, and but for a youthful pride of authorship and
some curiosity as to how he would take it I should have omitted it.

Friends in the audience told me that the way in which I watched him from
the corner of my eye was the most humorous thing in the paper. At the
beginning his head was bowed, and for some time he showed no emotion of
any sort, but as I went on and it grew worse and worse, he gave way to a
burst of merriment and I saw that I was saved.

I was gratified then, and his kindliness brings a little glow of
good-will--that softens my farewell.

MARK TWAIN

Of Mark Twain my memory is confined to two brief views, both before he
had achieved his fame. One was hearing him tell a story with his
inimitable drawl, as he stood smoking in front of a Montgomery Street
cigar-store, and the other when