He who has no personal peculiarity or individual idiosyncrasy would be not only a singular type of manhood, but would indicate a want of character amounting to tameness and even weakness. Only a few exhibit peculiar characteristics so strange and paradoxical as to excite general notice for their eccentricity. Among the old residents of our locality, who have paid the debt of nature, are a few whose peculiarities deserve notice, and whom it cannot harm to describe.
    Is a name familiar to all old settlers. He was a character! Social, witty, endowed with great powers of mimicry and an exact memory of events, he amused his auditors with an endless relation of ludicrous narratives and quaint remarks. In his presence the laugh was sure to go round, not in gentle ripples, but in a brawling stream. In a family who were all humorous, he was chief. The boy who whistled in school excused it by saying, "it whistled itself." So, from Capt. Dryden the flow of wit and humor bubbled out spontaneously, from a natural and irrepressible impulse. His polite and deferential gallantry modified the roughness of his narrations to the ladies, who were often startled with strange and queer jests that were a little dubious.
    His features were bronzed, large and irregular; with high cheekbones, and his whole physiognomy variegated with scars and wrinkles; he was homely, but not repulsive. His giant frame was gaunt and stalwart, and when his long arms were extended in awkward and rapid gesticulation, they added to the fun of his entertainments. Anyone who ever saw president Lincoln would be struck with the remarkable personal likeness between the men.
    Having passed his life as a seaman, he was very "salt" in all his expressions. A partition was a "bulwark ," to sit down was "to come to anchor," and he hit a fellow on the "starboard or larboard bow," and thus on; he interlarded his whole conversation with a vocabulary of nautical terms. His ship was himself personated. A Chinaman had been suffocated by the fumes of charcoal, which had been employed to destroy rats in the hold of his vessel. The San Francisco coroner was mystified and astonished by his evidence: "I returned to port because I had rats in me; they gnawed holes in my bottom, and I was leaking. I was obliged to smoke myself, and the d----d fool of a Chinaman came on board in the night, and I found him a wreck in the morning." He was for several years captain of the old tug Fearless, and afterwards sailed the clipper brig Sheet Anchor, whose crab-like progression was proverbial. The captain of the slow bark Charles Devens once remarked that "he had never passed anything at sea, except the Sheet Anchor and the Farallones." On shipboard his stentorian tones of voice resounded afar, and it required but a slight emergency to excite him to a frenzy of imprecation.
    He attended all the parties and balls, and was the gayest of the gay; but too often in the late hours, having drunk too deeply of "the flowing bowl," he boiled with vengeance at some fancied slight or insult, and a row began. Blood flowed, ladies screamed, and the Terpsichorean revel closed suddenly in gloom. Few dared to meet his stalwart frame and dogged determination in single combat when his blood was up. They sometimes "doubled teams" on him, and now and then he came out with battered face, and even broken limbs. But again, he, singlehanded, put to  ignominious flight their combined cohorts, driving them to cover in abject fear, their valor oozing from their trembling limbs. "The rackets" we hear about today are tame and spiritless compared with the stirring gales of excitement under the direction of Dryden.
    He erected a spacious and pleasant mansion near North Bend, and installed his aged mother, to whom he was ever kind, indulgent, and generous, as mistress. It was here that, with a nautical experience, he inaugurated an agricultural campaign. There was money in farming, and he would reap the golden rewards. He had no doubt of his ability to navigate the plow and spade; to sail the dairy and the crops into a harbor of dimes and rich results. The barren hills obstinately refused to deliver crops. His corn and vegetables put on a sickly hue of paleness, grew to a spiteful stumpedness of stature, and showed a mean disposition to scandalize his skill and efforts. Dryden was more than disappointed, he was angry--he was loud in scathing abuse of those San Francisco rascals who had swindled him. He believed that the poor seed they had sold him was the cause of all his misfortunes. After  ineffectual efforts, and much time and money expended, he came to understand that a sailor might write in a small book "what he knew about farming," and that Coos Bay hilltops are not profitably productive. Though he did not succeed in farming, he made a pleasant home, and spent time in pursuits bucolic that might have been wasted in the alcoholic.
    Imprudent exposures undermined his strong constitution. A fatal consumption was clutching at his vitals, his stout voice grew weak and piping, but still he maintained his activity and cheerfulness. He died on board the Sheet Anchor, on her way to Coos Bay, and was buried in the broad ocean, upon whose bosom so much of his life had been passed.
    Was another "queer fish." His lineaments were not impressively beautiful or intellectual. His capacious head indicated either a large brain or a thick skull. "The milk of human kindness" was but dimly shadowed forth in his expression. It may be that his features belied his noble heart, and his physiognomy was at fault. Except a little domestic tyranny, he left no record of violence or criminal act.
    His great ambition was business. "Bizness is bizness," was his oft-repeated watchword. Trade for the sake of trade was his enjoyment. His capital was limited, his transactions were not ponderous and did not materially affect the commercial world, or receive extended notice in the great marts of trade. Exchanges from fifty cents up, or from five dollars down, were worthy of his financial attention. If he could shake a few dollars in his pocket, he was sure to do so, and felt happy in the display of coin.
    He had infinite assurance and familiarity. "A word with you"--to call an unsuspecting victim aside, and "buttonhole" him for a half an hour about nothing, was his perpetual bore. It reminded the old settlers of the annoyance of Captain Harris, when an old fogy called him confidentially to the end of a long wharf at Empire City, and whispered in his ear, "What do you think, Rogers wouldn't lend me his bullet molds." He was never at a loss to make the acquaintance of a passing stranger, when it was so easy to introduce himself with a flourish--"I am Captain Cussans," and then followed with a free and careful inquisition into the victim's designs and business. He owed whiskey a terrible spite, and "punished" it on all occasions, so that he was saturated with its fumes "from early morn to dewy eve."
    He kept a small hotel at Empire City. His table abounded with the productions of our waters--fish, clams and crabs--which were his chief staple, and cooked in all the varieties of the culinary art. His patrons were mainly of that high-toned class who, at late hours, were too fatigued to disrobe, and "turned in," boots and all. His supply of blankets was limited, especially when there was a rush of lodgers. Although the story is old, yet it is true, that he supplied the deficiency of blankets by pulling them off the sleeping "drunks" and passing them over to fresh arrivals.
    It is said he was more polite to his family in words than acts; that he hung, Betty-like, around the kitchen to dictate and scold. Now and then, addressing his wife with "my dear, don't do that," he hit her with the frying pan by way of emphasis.
    He is now in "another sphere," and only left "to point a moral or adorn a tale."'
    Was not a graduate of any university, or a member of the learned professions. His course of reading had not extended to classic lore--or any other lore; even the modern newspaper did not claim much of his attention. He received the appellation of Fortnight from a slight misapprehension. It is related that, being informed that someone had hauled a large number of rails in a fortnight, Miller, having never heard of that designation of time, conceived it to be some vehicle or machine, and expressed a strong desire to possess one.
    On another occasion, hearing some one speak of the World's Fair, he became impressed with the idea that it was the belle of womankind, selected from all the beauties of the world, and declared: "I would give fifty dollars to kiss her." When it is recollected that the fairest young ladies retail kisses all round at twenty-five cents each, at church fairs, that the poor Esquimaux may be provided with linen dusters, or benighted Africans with woolen mufflers, we can imagine what impression the loveliness of the World's Fair made upon Mr. Miller. These are but trifling errors committed by one who was not "posted," and which permit us to smile broadly, and not condemn.
Coast Mail, Marshfield, Oregon, September 27, 1879, page 3