Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 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

TUANITA MILLER, the charming
4 daughter of the late Joaquin Miller.
THE Poet of the Sierras," has just
been granted divorce from her trial hus-
band John Reavis.
Mr.. Reavis is an American residing in
the Philippines. He was supposed to be
the owner of a rich plantation, sundry
mines and bungalow where his comfort
was looked after by three Isorrote ladies
whom he called "Picl1le1," Peaches" and
"Cita" During the legal proceedings some
doubt was cast if not upon the riches OF
mines and plantation at least upon his
generosity in scattering their proceeds
The interesting Igorrote trio did not fig
ure as correspondents. They were a sort
of sultry, dusky background to the fevered
romance of the poets daughter But, like
thunder cloud, they leaped forth at last
when Mr. Reavis, so the disillusioned trial
bride told the court, informed her that he
was going home to them, together with an
affinity he had found in Texas, but that
'that need not prevent her from going, too,
If she cared
1t was then that Juanita decided to with
draw from her wedding bargain and to call
the trial marriage 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 Nights"
the wonderful Miller estate in the Pied
mont Hills, overlooking Oakland, Cali
fornia. But some of the friends she had
invited thought "she couldn't get off as
easy as that" Her legal advisers con-
firmed 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
off 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 letters to the legally con-
stituted locksmiths who knock off 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 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 off.
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 tangle as this
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS April mating
moon Igorrote harem and so on thing.
But Joaquin Miller had, as the old phrase
goes, This own ideas"-and so has his
daughter. The two were entirely devoted
to each other, and II she worshipped the
picturesque, gray old man, clinging to his
mountain top, his ways and costume of the
frontiersman and with the true spirit of
poetry within him, he no less worshipped
this brilliant. full blooming beauty who
was his only child. II was with struggle
he allowed her to go 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 "The
flights" where the old poet lay.