quately noticed in The Overland Monthly, which had been launched two months before. Stoddard was absent in Hawaii; but in January, 1870, Bret Harte gave Joaquin a humorous but not unfriendly salute in the new magazine: "We find in 'Joaquin, Et Al.' the true poetic instinct, with a natural felicity of diction and a dramatic vigour that are good in performance and yet better in promise. Of course, Mr. Miller is not entirely easy in harness, but is given to pawing and curvetting; and at such times his neck is generally clothed with thunder and the glory of his nostrils is terrible."
Following this recognition from the leading literary periodical of the Far West, Miller came down from Oregon to embrace the bards of San Francisco Bay—so romantically addressed by him in Joaquin, Et Al.—came to embrace them and to be embraced by them—"clad," says Stoddard, who had now returned from Hawaii, "in a pair of beaded moccasins, a linen 'duster' that fell nearly to his heels, and a broad-brimmed sombrero." Fresh, breezy, ingenuous, Miller exclaimed at once, "Well, let us go and talk with the poets." Stoddard took him around to call upon Bret Harte, and presented him also to the most lyrical third of their trinity, the local Sappho, In a Coolbrith, who was at once impressive and sympathetic. But on the whole, literary glory at the Golden Gate was paler than his expectations—"he had been somewhat chilled by his reception in the metropolis." Had
