The Washington times., 1919-04-20
The Late Joaquin Miller, the
'Poet of the Sierras" and
Juanita's Father, in the
Odd Frontier Costume
/ He Liked to Wear

FUANITA MILLER, the charming
daughter of the late Joaquin Miller
eThe Poet of the Sierras," has just
been granted divorce from her trial hus.
bad, John ReaEis.
Mr.. Reavis is an American residing in
the Philippines. He was supposed to be
the owner of rich plantation, sundry
mines and bungalow where his comfort
was looked after by three Igorrote ladies
whom he called "Pickle5," Peaches" and
"Cits." During the legal proceedings some
doubt was CAST, If not upon the riches OF
minez and plantation at least upon his
panerosity in scattering their proceeds.
The interesting Igorrote trio did not fg-
ure as correspondents. They were a sort
of sultry, dusky background to the feVered
romance of the poets daughter. But, Ike
q thunder cloud, they leaped forth at last
when Mr.. Reavis, so the disillusioned trial
bride told the court, informed her that ne
was going home to them, together with an
affinity he had found in Texas, but that
sthat need not prevent her from going, boo'
If she cared"
II was then that Juanita decided to with
draw from her wedding bargain and to call
the trial marriage a mis-trial She had
fixed the date of her final wedding cere-
mony for the April full moon, the old
mating moon" of the extreme ancients'
IN the shadowy forests of THE Hights,"
the wonderful Miller estate in the Pied
fornia. But some of the friends she had
invited thought "she couldn't get on as
easv as that" Her legal advisers con-
frmed them!
And so all the time that Juanita had
thought she had been living in what the
Greenwich Village parlor Bolshevists call
the "enlightened, advanced relationship OF
the sexes" she had been just as respect
ably married as the most commonplace
citizen!
Instead of being decorated with an orna-
mental little bracelet that she could slip
of with celebrity and ease when so minded,
she was firmly bound by the chains OF
matrimony!
Profoundly distressed by her discovery,
Mrs. Juanita Miller Reavis lost no time in
carrying her fetters to the legally con-
stituted Iocksmiths who knock of such
things If cause can be shown. She charged
mental and physical cruelty and neglect"
And the California courts, not holding
against her the fact that but a few months
before she had declared her mating was
quite beyond such mundane institutions
as legal marriage and divorce, decided,
after hearing about Pickles, Peaches and
Cita and other things, to knock 'em of
Of course, say Miss Juanita's friends
she has been allowed to resume her
maiden name-if Juanita weren't the true
daughter OF her poet father and poet and
musician herself she would never have
gotten herself into such a tangle as this
riagethat-wasn't-One, April mating
moon, Igorrote harem and so on thing
But Joaquin Miller had, as the cid phrase
goes, his own ideas"-and so has his
daughter. The two were entirely devoted
to each other, and If she worshipped the
picturesque, gray old man, clinging to his
mountain top, his ways and costume of the
and with the true spirit of
poetry within him, he no less worshipped
this brilliant, full blooming beauty who
was his only child. It was with a struggle
he allowed her to 90 to New York to COM
plete her musical education, and It was his
last Illness that cut short the career she
had planned for herself in the East and
sent her back to the little cabin on "Tbe
Hights" where the old poet lay.