MARKHAM, EDWIN.  Born at Oregon City, Ore., Apr. 23, 1852.  Went to
  California 1857; worked at farming and black-smithing, and herded
  cattle and sheep, during boyhood.  Educated at San Jose Normal School
  and two Western colleges; special student in ancient and modern
  literature and Christian sociology; principal and superintendent of
  schools in California until 1899.  Mr. Markham is one of the most
  distinguished of American poets and lecturers.  His poem “The Man with
  the Hoe” in his first volume of poems is world-famous, and has been
  heralded by many as “the battle-cry of the next thousand years.”  He
  has sounded in his work the note of universal brotherhood and
  humanitarian interest, and has been credited as opening up a new
  school of American poetry appealing to the social conscience, where
  Whitman appealed only to the social consciousness.  His books are “The
  Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems,” “Lincoln, and Other Poems,” “The
  Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems,” and “Gates of Paradise, and
  Other Poems.”  His book “California the Wonderful” is a volume of
  beautiful prose giving a historical, social, and literary study of the
  state. A Creed; Duty; Opportunity; Preparedness; Rules for the Road;
  The Stone Rejected; Two at a Fireside; Victory in Defeat.

MASON, WALT.  Born at Columbus, Ontario, May 4, 1862.  Self-educated.  Came
  to the United States 1880; was connected with the Atchison Globe
  1885-7; later with Lincoln, Neb., State Journal; editorial
  paragrapher of the Evening News, Washington, 1893; with the Emporia,
  Kan., Gazette since 1907.  Writes a daily prose poem which is
  syndicated in over two hundred newspapers, and is believed to have the
  largest audience of any living writer.  Among his books are “Rhymes of
  the Range,” “Uncle Walt,” “Walt Mason’s Business Prose Poems,”
  “Rippling Rhymes,” “Horse Sense,” “Terse Verse,” and “Walt Mason, His
  Book.” Lions and Ants; The Has-Beens; The Welcome Man.

MILLER, JOAQUIN.  Born in Indiana, Nov. 11, 1841; died Feb. 17, 1913.  He
  went to Oregon 1854; was afterwards a miner in California; studied
  law; was a judge in Grant County, Oregon, 1866-70.  For a while he was
  a journalist in Washington, D.C.; returned to California 1887.  He is
  the author of various books of verse, and is called “The Poet of the
  Sierras.” Columbus; To Those Who Fail.

MILTON, JOHN.  Born at London, Dec. 9, 1608; died there Nov. 8, 1674. 
  Attended St. Paul’s School; at Cambridge 1625-32.  At Horton, writing
  and studying, 1632-38.  In 1638 went to Italy; met Galileo in Florence. 
  During the great Civil War wrote pamphlets against the Royalists; was
  made Latin Secretary to the new Commonwealth 1649; became totally
  blind 1652.  Until his third marriage