Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/229

 questions made out beforehand by himself or the city editor, especially where there was need to guide the garrulities of an old man; and Prairie Flower was probably known neither to the reporter nor city editor, who would have been more interested, anyway, in the first hotel and the first ferry-boat across the Willamette. The author was 88, and the novel, so far and so vaguely back in his long retrospect, might easily have gone unmentioned without prompting. Similarly, he was a very old man, 79 and 83, when the other two ac counts were published, and the young men gathering biographies for subscription books would hardly have been the ones to know about and ask about a novel. And, in addition to all, he never loudly proclaimed his authorship to the public.

It is not the purpose of these pages, however, to be argumentative or to dwell speculatively on how it was or was not. The evidence on one side has been given and the documents on the other side will presently be added. The reader can then decide, in a sort of Lady or the Tiger way, whether Sidney Walter Moss wrote Prairie Flower. Before giving the testimony of Moss' daughter and Moss himself, some comment will be introduced in fuller description of the book and the characters, themselves in literary controversy as to whom they represented in the early life of Oregon. Following is the book's statement about itself:

"The characters—being all real, some represent a class, some an individual only. Prairie Flower is drawn from real life. That the proceedings of herself and tribe may appear mysterious, and, to some, at first thought (her locality and everything considered), out of place, the author does not doubt; but he believes that no one who is conversant with Indian history, and especially with that relating to the North-western tribes and the Moravian Missions during the early settlement of Ohio, will find in this character or her tribe anything overstrained or unnatural.... She is a marked character, distinct and peculiar...."

The book is written in the first person. The plot is of two college pals, the hero, Frank Leighton, a doctor, and Charles Huntley, a lawyer, who leave their home in Boston after graduation and go west for adventure. There is an introduc-