But we found neither fortune nor friends in that great city." In 1863 Mrs. Fremont was there, and Charles Warren Stoddard, and Prentice Mulford, and in a Coolbrith. Bret Harte was writing for The Golden Era. The nucleus was already formed of the literary group which Mark Twain joined in 1864, and which launched The Californian and The Overland Monthly. Whether at this time Miller made any attempt to break into the "western school" does not appear. If he did so, we can understand his failure. He was still a very immature writer, though Stoddard records that he did contribute to. The Golden Era, "from the backwood depths of his youthful obscurity." But coming as he did in the midst of the Civil War to the outskirts of a group animated by Bret Harte, then engaged in writing strongly patriotic verse and prose, the editor of a paper which had just been suppressed for disloyalty could hardly have expected a very cordial reception.
One is tempted to conjecture that Miller's failure to establish a literary or journalistic connection in the city may perhaps have dashed a little the spirits of his bride. At any rate, he says that even while they were living in San Francisco, she had presentiments of "wreck and storm and separation for us." If thwarted aspiration for more literary and social life than she had enjoyed in the lumber camp had stimulated these presentiments, they must have been strengthened when Joaquin bought a band of cattle
