JOAQUIN MILLER.
The story of literary greatness is sometimes a strange, but thrilling one. Genius has always its charms. Its language has never yet been fully written, its eloquence never been fully spoken. Schliepmann, uncovering the marble upon which Phidias and his followers carved out immortality for themselves, has wrought more effectually and more wonderfully than have some of the humbler men of genius in these modern days. Upon his canvas of stone, the unknown artist portrays for us Herod's temple with its outer courts and columns and its massive walls. Upon his canvas of immortal vision, all athrill with poetic beauty and inspiration, the obscure genius sometimes portrays pictures of living thought and life—pictures that forever glow in the radiant glory of unfading light.
Thus it is that since the earliest stars in the bright constellation of the western writers began to appear, the reading public have been eagerly scanning each new light conjecturing if perchance it might not be a new planet—a new luminary brighter and more enduring than the mere flash of a passing meteor or the dying spark of a falling star. But those were pioneer times, pioneer manners, and pioneer men—even the infusion from the East grew to be pioneer in strength of body, pioneer in vigor of intellect, and pioneer in passion
