Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/234

 to rival her own fair self—sat Lilian Huntley. It was one of those peculiar moments which are distinctly remembered through life. I had just offered her my hand and fortune, and was waiting, with all the trembling impatience of a lover, to hear the result.

"Say, Lilian, sweet Lilian, will you be mine?"

Her lily hand trembled, I felt its velvet-like pressure, but her tongue had lost the power of utterance. It was enough; and the next moment she was strained to my heart, with a joy too deep for words.

"And when shall it be? when shall my happiness be con summated, dear Lilian?" I at length ventured to ask.

For a time she did not reply; and then raising her angelic face, and fastening her soft, beaming eyes, moist with tears of joy, upon mine, she said, in a low, sweet, tremulous tone:

"On the day when we are all made glad by the presence of my brother."

"Alas!" groaned I, mentally; "that day may never come!

Prairie Flower was the first work of fiction by an Oregonian, but A Melodrame Entitled "Treason, Strategems and Spoils", In Five Acts, By Breakspear, was the first book of a literary character published in Oregon. "Breakspear" was William L. Adams, who three years later became owner and editor of the Oregon City Argus. From his log cabin in Yamhill County he had been contributing various pieces to the Oregonian over the signature of "Junius", which had "attracted much attention on account of their ability and pungent sarcasm." These were followed by his dramatic satire. It first ran serially in the Oregonian in the issues of February 14 and 21 and March 6 and 13, 1852, and was then published separately as a pamphlet by "Thos. J. Dryer, The