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Show JOAQUIN MILLER IN HIS BOYHOOD. When I was about to leave- the mountains of Oregon a few years ago and try my fortune in tho great wide world, as tho phrase runs, an old man sitting on a worm fence one ovoning, with his buckskin legs hanging down, wild to me, very tenderly and wisoly: "Joaquin, don t you no; tho world's an impostor, and it'll feed you on husks, ns it did the prodigal son." But I told him 1 wan resolved to go; then the old ninn looked down into tho sun that was fulling into tho Pacific sea like a mighty hemisphere of lire, then up at his Hocks ol sheep feeding on Uio hillside, and said, "Wal, Joaquin, ifynu must go, go; but you'll come buck some day to tho old ranch. You'll lie sick of tho world and sorry you went, and you won't havo no buckskin cloths, and you won't have no home. Hut when you do come hack for you're a good ineanin' boy, Joaquin and havo no buckskin clothes and no homo, you must come lo inc and I'll give you a home, and you shall live with mo and lako care of my Bheep, at $10 a mouth, as long iih you livo." Well, 1 havo worn out my other clothes, and I have no home, hut I can't go back to tho old man in tho . sheep bunincsfl, for, as tho French say, he is dead and gonu over to tho majority, and I como to you to-night to lecture. 1 li'll you all tiiis to bIiow lo you that tins is not my lavorito pursuit, and also to show to you that I have not the highest opinion of the present lecturer. Nor have I ol any man who wins notoriety or a namoin quite another lie-Id, and then consents to exhibit himself for him and call that lecturing. No, I had preferred the sheep business, and at this moment mo-ment wish I had accepted tho old man's odor. |