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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 27, 1908)
t -r-m.r i -t nnrAi'T i nnnTT A VT Ti Til Tc"YT TITT T? 27, 1908. "NEW THEATER," DEVOTED TO PLAYS OF MERIT, IS DEDICATED IN NEW YORK CITY Founders and Promoters Do Not Contemplate Profit, but Hope to Advance ; . . 'J y I f - "-'J V; '- b' -:.,.,J t-tL'- lAr " 1 - , 4. . . v ( f M'..fr?' ffS " , t . j l , ! n , " ' t -y ' I - . s. p ' . 3 i ' ' r r r.--jr- T'Cr'r;; -v-w- f VV- , ' V - - " ru:- ;-K - . : I - - A 3 "r, --1 S. f EXTERIOR. GF . .NEW : : TH EATER ! f y ..ffv- T7 rwfe-4i 'itA"y ' i" " - " ' A I : --. - . , s . , ycyi I , - . : - vlj'" It i f . , " ..." ; : 9 f ' ! i EW YORK. Die. (Srx-Oial.) Mayor Mi:.'lellan was the chief flrure In the d. dilation of the t:ev theater whicli oceurrcd in the Theater building Tuesday. The exteri or of the building Is now rapidly P pruavhing completion and from the pic ture of the mod-l herewith sorfte idea may be Rained uf the appearance of the interior as the architects have planned It. It Is expected that the building will be ready for occupancy in less than n year and already the artistic and lUerary bure.uis are busy making: preparations for the event. Not long ai;o John Corbln sent out notices throuch the .public press that manuscripts of plays would be exam ined and the readers are now going through the large number offered since that notice was published. Meantime, Mr. Wlnthrop Ames, whose home Is In Boston, hca opened an office in ihis city. The responsibility for the success of the enterprise from an artistic view point will rest on the shoulders of Messrs. Ames, Corbin and Lee Shubert. Mr. Ames U the director of the Insti tution, Mr. Corbln its literary man ager and Mr. Shubert its business man ager. The plan of the new theater does not contemplate proiit for its founders and supporters. The money with which It is beintr built has been contributed by wealthy men and women for the ad vancement of the art. Like the Co medie Krancaise of I'aris. it. is to pro duce plays which are meritorious with out regard to their popular qualities that Is. the possible "drawing power" of a play is to be no consideration with the management. Literary merit Is to have great weight In the selection of plays. Of the three managers. Mr. Ames is the least known to the sencral public outside of Boston. In that city he is known as the man who with little ex perience took hold of the Castle Square Theater and established in it a model stock company. Mr. Corbin was for some time the dramatic critic of the New York Sun and his dramatic re views were widely read. Iee Shubert Is one of the Shubert Brothers, who have several theaters in New York and others scattered through the United States, and who have made fortunes In theatrical management. Architecturally the new building will be nearly perfect. It will be built for comfort both before and behind the scenes. In front there will be a foyer. Krand staircase, retiring rooms, cloak rooms, smoking rooms, restaurant, buf fet, roof garden, etc. The auditorium will be elliptical, the long axis being parallel to the stage. There will be two tiers of 24 boxes each communica ting through private halls. The first tier of boxes will be only four feet above ;':: orchestra floor. The house MODEL. Of .INTERIOR HEW will seat 2318 comfortably. Behind, there will be 23 dressing rooms and 16 rooms for storage and scenery. In ad dition will be quarters for the school of dramatic art which is a part of t.he scheme of the theater. The school will have 12 rooms and a concert hall. In Space has been allotted In the Oriental building for the exhibits of automobiles and sporting goods that will be shown at Portland's firsf automobile show next J-"-. per cent of the space has beep, spoken for. and l-oui racts have been closed for three-fourths of' the show room. Motor cars and sundries to the value of over half a million dollais win lie shown, illustrating the extent to which the industry has reached in Portland. All the prominent makes of cars manufactured in America will be on display. Dramatic Art in the United States. sQW CO5Z3ISS T-HEATER- addition to plays, the new theater will give light operas. Cities in I lie Slindow. Kansas City Times. Conies now an appeal for xthe Cities PERSPECTIVE VEEW SHOWING HOW INTERIOR OF ARMORY WILL BE That Never Have Been Known. Great they may be. driving a roaring trade. Im portant In their own eyes, perhaps even beautiful. But unknown. It has been their misfortune to be overshadowed by some monster neighbor which .has ab sorbed the attention of the country. The list has never been completed. But It should Include Brooklyn. Jersey City, Newark. Rochester. Syracuse. Buffalo, Worcester. Ij'iin. and heaven only knows how many more. Each of these cities has a population of at least 100.00P. and Brooklyn has considerable more than 1. O.O0. But to trie outside world they are mere names and nothing more. New York and Boston obscure them so that they are lost to vie-. A man from Atlanta, traveling for the first time In New York and New England, came back dared. "When I left home." he confided. "I supposed Atlanta was one of the big cities of the country. But I've found a doz?n cities blgser than Atlanta that I'd never heard of before." Using Ferns for Packing. , The fern plant, which grows almost everywhere, is an excellent preservative .for packing article of food, fruit, etc. ' People who have lived in England kDOW that the English have used it successfully for many years. Fine fruit, fresh but ter, etc., are no longer seen lr. the Eng lish markets packed in grapevine leaves, but almost always In fresh fern leaves, which keep the articles excellently. This In done even where grapevine leaves sr to bs had In abundance. Every one post ed' well In botany knows the high pre servative power of fern leaves with reference to vegetable and animal sub stances. On the Is'.e of Man fresh herrings are packed in ferns and arrive on the mar ket in as fresh a condition as when they were shipped. Potatoes packed In ferns keep many months longer than others packed only In ftraw. Experiments made with both straw nad fern leaves In the sajne cellar showed surprising results In favor of ferns. While the potatoes packed In straw m-istly showed signs of rotting In the Spring, those in ferns were ae fresh as if they had Just been dug. Fresh meat is also well preserved by fern leaves. It would seem as if the highly preservative qualities of fern K-aves are due to their high percentage of salt. No larvae, maggots, etc.. ap proach ferns, as the strong odor keeps them awa. New Diamond Drill. Consul-General John P. Bray reports that 'a trial was recently held at Mel bourne in the presence of representative Australian mining men of a- new di ninnd drill, the Invention of the officers of the Department of Mines of Victoria. The leading feature of the new drHI is its portability, the total weight of the machine being only 400 pounds, as com pared with three or four tons-the weight of the machines now in use. The Pio neer diamond drill can be worked either bv hand or motive power, being caPa of boring 300 feet by the former and 600 hv the atter process. n ouic two-Inch hole, producing a c Inches in diameter. IMi Xo Women in the Mine. Milwaukee Sentinel. From Culican, Mexico, it Is reported that because a woman entered the Jesus Maria y Annexae mines sei-eral hundred miners went on strike and refused to return to work until the parish priest went Into the mines and sprinkled all shafts and tunnels with consecrated water. Is an old superstition amtmg Mexican miners thst if a woman enters a mine a catastrophe will follow. , Kippered Kipling. St Mollis Post-Dispatch. A fool there was and he made his dream 1 Bven a you and I ! ) To a nine-day wonder baseball team It never vbi worthy of his esteem). But the fool would holler, and root ana cream (Even as you and I') Oh. the hopes we waste and tha cheers we waste. And the confidence we misplace I'pnti our team when the begin (And now know they never can win) In the yearly pennant chase ! A fool there was In the claih of clubs (Even as you and 1!) And a bear never rooted so hard for eruba (And this in the end is the thing that rubs) He found he had followed a bunch of dubs (Even as you and I!) Oh. the toll we loat and the bets we lost And the beautiful thing's we'd dream Because of the faith that was in us that (Thank heaven we now know where we'ra at) We'd a pennant-winning team! The fool hat grieved till hi aoul la aore (Even as you and I! And he hasn't the heart to ak the score (You know you flon't care any morel And he'll be relieved when the season's o'er (Even as you and I!) And it isn't the shame and It isn't tbe blame Thar.t stings like a poisoned lance. It's the conviction latterly growing- strong (iiomethiiig they told us nil along) That we never did stand a chance! SCIENTIST BELIEVES INHABITANTS OF PLANET MARS ARE INTELLIGENT TREES Dr. Robinson Declares Conditions Such on Planet That Lung Capacity Would Distort Being jRTIANS, if they exist at all, aro 1 I Intelligent trees rather than human beings. The real genus homo can be grown in but one place In the universe, and that place Is the earth. Thus says one learned Dr. Robinson, of London, who seeks to convert his erudite brothers to his way of think ing by Innumerable proofs of the In evitable and literal worldllness of the human race. Whatever the Inhabitants of Mars may be like, he argues. It would be impossible for us. If we met one of them, to recognize -him as a man and a brother. How could we? Beings who are equal to gigantic la bors such as the digging of 'canals." BUILDS FINK OPERA HOUSE FOR BOSTON. c 'A 5 K. D, Jordan. NEW YORK, Dec. 2. (Special.) Boston is fortunate in having; two such publlc-iplrlted citizens as Eben D. Jordan and Henry Higginson. Mr. HlKginson contributed a amall for tune to the maintenance of the Bos ton Symphony Orchestra In the In terest of good music; Mr. Jordan has Juat supplied the capital necessary to assure to .Boston a fine opera house. It Is Intended to have an opera com pany In Boston Independent of those In New York, and yet strengthened by an exchange of artlata with the Metropolitan Company. The corner stone of the opera house was laid this week. ' compared with which the Mississippi Is the veriest gutter, with not more than one eighth of ouf atmosphere to breathe meanwhile, must have a chest development which would distort them out of all resemblance to humanity, while the low force of gravity in Mars would enable people of average weight to get about on legs not much stouter than those of a collie dog. Little Atmosphere There. According to soinn, observers, like Professor Campbell, of the Lick Obser vatory, it Is even an open question whether Mars has any more atmos phere than the moon. Leading physi cians have declared that no oxygen, hydrogen or water could exist on so small a world without being dissipated Into space and sucked up by ourselves and the sun. Hence It hag been sug gested that the polar snow caps of Mars may consist of solid carbonic acid gas. From this point of view our Martian neighbors must subsist on an atmos pheric diet of carbonic acid instead of upon one of air. and hence would be more likely to resemble trees in their physical constitution than the higher animals. Here below we Irrigate and cultivate a passive and helpless vege table populace. There above. In Mars, perhaps an alert and enterprising vegetable race Is watering and fertiliz ing the soil on Its own initiative and for its own private ends. Dr. Robinson finds that in tracing man's pedigree up from the lowest or ganisms to his present proud estate, it becomes clear that conditions abso lutely peculiar to the earth gradually determlned the course of his evolution into the being with the characteristic man traits: that man is literally of the ARRANGED FOR THE MOTOR earth earthy, and that In all his parts, mental and bodily, he is as much a product of the complex conditions of life on this planet as the features of a bronze Image, are a 'product of the mold In which It has been cast. If the Influence on the earth had been different, man would have been different. Gravity, air pressure. tem perature, moisture and light are only a few of these. All along man s his tory there must have been, on innum erable occasions, a dividing of the ways. In which conditions absolutely peculiar to this planet determined the Issue as to which path should Had up ward to humanity. The items which have directed the plastic life stream along this or that channel of evolution were often as In considerable and as fortuitous as the utterly trlvjal events which In every day life fatally determine our future. Often In treading life's numberless cross roads the main procession of liv ing things goes one way. ending no where In particular, while a few in dividuals drift off through some casual influent- along an obscure bypath, which In the end proves the only t;ack lending upward to the goali ' Division of Animals. A glance at some of these controll ing conditions pictures for the Doctor how and why he Is. and proves (hat he could not exist elsewhere. Karly In organic evolution some of the prim itive forces divided into those that drew carbonic acid. Those that took the carbonic acid shut themselves oft forever from all earthly channels of becoming active and versatile beings of the nature of man. Then came the division into verte brate and invertebrate, or, as Pro fessor Lloyd Morgan puts it. into flesh and bone animals and skin and squash animals. Some of the skin and squash animals, like spiders, bees and ants, In a sense are much more highly de veloped, both physically and socially, than the vertebrates. Nevertheless, by dispensing with a backbone their an cestors took a fatal step, so far as ever evolving into human beings is concerned. By depending too much on their skin for protection they became literally hidebound, and' when they de sire to grow large. like certain crabs and lobsters, they are obliged to pe riodically burst off their outer cover ing and remain dormant long before the new skin is ready for service. Another orlsls came when it was to be decided whether land or water should be the scene of future activity. A momentous question this. For none of the creatures that remained purely water animals ever acquired much brain. Their environment always was cold and wet. and hence too uniform, and the forces which controlled their lives were too rigid and too mighty to give them much chance of versatility or choice of action. It was only the waterborn vertebrates who succeeded in adapting themselves to land life that entered, upon the narrow path which led upward to humanity. Moon Was Nearer. In ancient times, as now, It was the shallow seas which abounded with animal life. Those creatures that were near a sloping shore were liable to be left high and dry twice in the 24 hours at low tide. Long ago. Sir George Darwin shows the moon was much nearer the earth than It Is now, and its attraction was much stronger. Hence vast areas were alternately flooded and dry. and my riads of creatures which originally ex tracted a little air from the water by means of gills found themselves obliged to take their air undiluted or die for want of it. Those who tri umphed in the ordeal were on their way to genus homo. It becomes clear that unless some earthlike planet possessed vast shallow oceans and a' moon closely resembling our own, upward progress of this crit ical epoch would depend on entirely different circumstances, and the results would have to be wholly different. As Darwin pointed out. man still retains in fils physical framework, and in the functions of his body, traces not only of gills for obtaining air from wa ter, but also at the regular periodic recurrence of lunar influence. The next set of crossroads is a maze wherein the devious but ever upward way is hard to trace. Huge popula tions of cold-blooded amphibia and reptiles swarm over the land. Some how from among these there developed certain sets of creatures with a great ly improved breathing apparatus and a more rapid circulation. These crea tures eventually became I he birds and the mammals. It was the birds that first took the right turning. Their SHOW. hearts had four chambers instead of two. and their lungs had larger ca pacity for gelling oxygen from the air. So their tissues were supplied with blood. In which the carbonic acid had been eliminated much better than un der the old system of circulation. Advantages of Warm Blood. Owing to the more rapid and com plete oxidizing of the waste products in, their bodies, their blood became warmer. This was an enormous up ward step. These beings were no longer dependent, like their rivals, on external heat. Their hot. re! blood "made Summer in their vein?." This gave them a stupendous advan tage over-other animals. Even the baby mammals, feeble and not much WINNKK OF SOBEI. PRIZE FOB CHEMISTRY. t ' : I : it n i v i? j t.el i J ! : If Wit uflU , SSV.S.J iisiiwilwill-t'iiriiiiil I Professor Ernest Rutherford. NEW YORK, Dec. 20. (Special.) It has been stated unofficially that Professor Ernest Rutherford will re ceive the Nubel prize for chemistry. rrorVssor Rutherfard was formerly of McGil! University. Montreal, lie is now of Manchester University. He was well known when In 1!03 he ad vanced the theory cf radio-activity. This was based on his research work Into the properties of thorium. Two years later, when he published the complete results of his researches, he received the Rumford medal. Professor Rutherford Is only .".K. He was born in New Zealand, of Scot tish parents. -4 4 bigger than rats, could escape the swarms of enormous reptiles because of their warm blood full of oxygen. Although wanting In brute force, they were capable of a more rapid and more sustained motion than their reptile foes. And they had brain cells nour ished by fast flowing, warm blood in stead of the sluggish and chilly fluid which fed the reptilllan brain. Thus they became quicker of perception and more fertile in schemes for attack and defense. They were Tom Thumbs, who hested their giapt adversaries by quickness and cunning. One of the great dividing of the ways had come when It became the rule, and not the exception, for the III tie mammals to be born alive. Since the young warm bloods were, born in a helpless state they had to bo suckled and tared for during long periods. Ed ucation came Into play, a great up ward step. For the first time in tlin world's history experience gathered during the .lifetime of one generation was put at the disposal of the next. Hence a capacity for brain growth and a power of learning on the, part of the young became more and more important if they were to profit by the experience of their elders. The first mammals are supposed to have been opossumliko creatures, which were arboreal In their habits. Now most creatures that leave the solid ground and take to the trees do so to avoid their enemies. And con sidering the swarms of various rep tiles, the presumption Is that the first weak mammals wero no exception to the rule. At all events the trees soon had a big refugee population. Up in the trees tliey evolved two distinct methods of getting a hold. I!y far the greater number developed claws and with them clung to the bark. A smaller number developed long digits, which can securo a good grip on the branches. The choice between the two was vitally critical as regards the future. A foot merely armed with sharp claws remains almost entirely a means of climbing, and can do little else. But when the flexible digits are lengthened snd arc regulated by groups of strong and complex muscles all the wonder ful powers of the human hand at once became possible. The Stone Age. Throughout the immeasurable stone ngs, man was continually in peril of death by hunger. Those successful in exercising their reasoning faculties in the chase sur vived. In the matter of clothes, dwell ings and weapons the long life in the trees probably is responsible for the phy sical helplessness which obliged man to resort to art in their manufacture. When at least part of what man owes to t he trees is considered, Dr. Robinson thinks it no longer a surprise that tree worship has become a cult among many,, different branches of the human family. And yet how slight a difference In condi tions on the earth would have prevented the development of trees. It is all duo to the avidity of the vegetable world for carbonic acid. For what is a tree? It is a long-lived plant that lias acquired woody liber and jjrown upward. Why doirs it grow up ward? Everybody on a plantation knows that the young trees at first arc set close together "to draw them up." It is this competition of plant with plant for light and for carbonic acid which makes each of them seek to tower above its fellow. The plant or tree which is able to over top its rivals and expose the greatest sur face of chlorophyll charged leaves to the air and sunlight extracts the most car bonic acid from the atmosphere to use in building up its own tissues. Given slightly different conditions as to atmosphere, moisture and soil .and this kind of vegetable competition, with Its fruitful and far-reaching influence, could not occur. It is not every part of the world that bars forest trees without hu man help. Vast regions like the steppes of Russia and the prairies of the United States are thickly covered with grasses and small herbage which get their light and carbonic acid without ever aspiring to be trees. Suppose the creeping grasses had been evolved earlier, and suppose the whole planet had beeii covered with prairie land during t he- critical tertiary epoch. How different the fate of genus homo. Anyone who understands physics, as tronomy and geology probably can bring forward numerous other Instances where) conditions peculiar to the earth have di rected the upward march of that slender procession f living creatures which has culminated in man. Chicago Tribune.
