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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 23, 1916)
TIIE SUNDAY OREGOXIAX, PORTLAND, J AXFARY 23, 1916. 10 SALT TO BE PRODUCED IN LARGE AMOUNTS AT LAKE NEAR ORO VILLE Extensive Irrigation Project, Embracing 10,000 Acres, Lends to Promise in Course of Construction Water to Be Piped to Railroad and I lit . 'Xs - --kfT Vv'i'H - -.V f v- 5 - .n, -if'r-. . , - ; j 1 I 7 x , - ; -7' ; Iicrji "WiiniiniMiii, Mim,ani fi WITH an extensive irrigratlon sys tem providins; for the reclama tion of 10.000 acres of land tn the vicinity of Oroville, Wash., bein? put in. and a large evaporator and ialt works under course of construc tion In the samo district, that section of Vashington s;lvea promise of forging- rapidly to the front In productive ness and wealth. The production of salt In that regrion will not be a new industry, for it has been going forward In a small way for some time, the open-air evaporation f the waters of a salt lake near Oro ville having been practiced. The lake Is a particularly profitable one for the purpose, as it is practically 98 per cent pure when evaporated, so little refin ing is necessary. Water Be Piped. The company which owns the lake Is How building an evaporator of about two tons capacity dally. The evapo rator Is located on the railroad track about two miles from the lake, and iti JULES ECKERT GOODMAN TELLS OF PLAYWRITING Former Portland Boy's Interview Takes Up Entire Page in New York Daily Newspaper Success Taken With Modesty. IN A WHOLE page interview in the New York Morning Telegraph, Jules Eckert Goodman talks most enter tainingly of the drama, motion pic tures, telling a bit about his own play ' writing and especially ot his latest dramatization of "Treasure Island." This play at the Punch and Judy Theater in New York Is justifying the predictions, which were made at its premiere, that it would prove one of the solid successes of the season. The delightfully quaint playhouse has be come the inecca of both old and young theatergoers, who thrill at the thought of adventure. Freda Kerchwey, one of the clever feature writers on the Telegraph, got a highly interesting story from this once-Oregonian. whose family still lives here, and whose big plays. "Mother" and "The Man Who Stood Still." and numerous magazine articles and sketches have made him well known in his field. "Successful dra matists." opines Miss Kirchwey. "have a certain kinship with art. combined with a near acquaintance with commer cialism that makea them especially in accessible and awe-stirring. "But Jules Eckert Goodman, play Is the Intention to pipe the water to it. By this means a haul of about four miles over a mountain road will be saved. It will also be possible for the manufacture of the salt to go for ward the year around; whereas, by the old system of open-air evaporation the lake could only be worked in Summer. With some of the main canals well under way it is expected that the West Okanogan irrigation district system, which is to irrigate some 10.000 acres of land in Okanogan County, Washing ton, along both sides of the Okanogan Hiver and Lake Osoyoos. will be com pleted in time to furnish water for the irrigation season this coming Summer. The irrigation system will consist of about 60 miles of main canals and syphons. Water is taken from the Similkameen River, seven miles above Oroville, and is distributed to all the lands by gravity. Water will be de livered from the canals to the highest points and the land owner will be re quired to distribute it on his own land. The West Okanogan irrigation dis wright and dramatizer of 'Treasure Island,' was, 1 found, a long way be low that pinnacle of inaccessibility. He is successful and his work is good, so art and commercialism must have claimed him for their own. Yet he stood on the same earth that I did and talked in friendly fashion. "Some great men have a way of mak ing the rest of their world grovel, but some are of kindlier mould and suc ceed in making their lesser brothers feel that they. too. may climb and learn to breathe the air on Olympus. "Such a great man is Mr. Goodman. "You see he admitted things about himself, and that is damaging to in accessibility. "He admitted, for instance, that he didn't know anything about boats and didn't understand nautical terms. When he needed some for his stage version of 'Treasure Island' he diligently searched Marryat and cribbed the ones that sounded well. "There are very few people, espe cially among landlubbers, that would make such a confession. "He admitted other things, too. "He admitted that he himself did not conceive the idea of dramatizing 'Treasure Island." The idea first be longed to Mr. Hopkins, of the Punch and Judy Theater, and Mr. Hopkins of District Where Huge Evaporator Is Product to Be Refined There. 4 W f --X trict is a co-operative and mutual irri gation system, organized, built and controlled by the land owners within the district. The district is located in North Central Washington immediately east of the Cascade Mountains and foothills. The lands to be irrigated extend southward down the valley of the Okanogan River, a distance of 24 miles from the international boundary line. The project contains the towns of Oroville and Tonaskat and the ship ping station of Ellisford and Cordell. with Janls at the southern extremity. An abundant supply of water Is assured for all classes of crops, as the board of directors has filed on 150 second feet of water, an amount suffi cient -to cover al the lands in the project to a depth of two and one-half feet, which, with the 13 inches of rain fall, will make an average of 43 inches of water. The Similkameen River has Ha source in the mountain streams of the Cascade Range, fed by the melting snow of the forest reserves and the perpetual snow fields of the summits. turned the task of realizing it over to Mr. Goodman. " 'But I jumped at the chance," Mr. Goodman added. -"Treasure Island' has always been one of my best friends. I suppose I've read it on an average of once a year ever since I was a kid, and that well, that makes a good num ber of times. Many Snaga Encountered. " 'But when I started work on It I certainly had no idea what a job it would be. All the way through I kept running up against snags that looked as though they couldn't be gotten 'round. " 'My task, you see, was to stick as close to Stevenson as I could and still turn out an actable play. You wouldn't realize how little real drama there may be in even a very dramatic tale. In "Treasure Island" there was practically no motivation. Things happened, one after another no reasons given, no motive apparent. It was necessary in making a play to supply that. And this meant changing the plot in some particulars. But 1 found that even where the plot was altered Stevenson's own words usually could be used. " 'One striking feature of all his writing is that the dialogue has in itself an intensely dramatic quality. Jt would go straight from the mouths of his characters in the book to the mouths of the characters on the stage. This is unusual in stories even dra matic ones. Job Is Terrific. " Then, of course, in the book the story is told in the first person by Jim raawicins, ana as a consequence nuver 1 stands out as the leading figure. In J the play the boy Hawkins had to be objectified and given the leading part, for the story revolves around him. and still Long John must hold his striking character. It Was a terrific job, but It was fun. " -But. he said, with sudden, amused emDhaeis. Tiot all romantic tales mine good plays. I've had some startling reauests for help since "Treasure Island" went on the boards from peo ple who are try'nft" to dramatize other stories. They evidently tnougnt tney fell in the same class. One was making a play of the "Swiss Family Robinson" you remember that pious family marooned on an island? An other wanted help on a dramatic ver sion of "Pilgrim's Progress." And. more fantastic than all. one man was -oTnafi7inf, "Rnhitisnn Crusoe" and urged me to collaborate! Considering the fact that the whole substance ot the story i Crusoe's life in solitary exile on a desert island it would seem to be quite a feat to present it in play form. To be sure, the moment when he discovers the footstep in the sand has been said by Brander Matthews, wasn't it to be the most dramatic in all literature. But on the whole human interest would seem to be largely lack ing, and the dialogue must be a bit scant. Of course there's the goat. He had a goat, didn't her Mr. Goodman looked deeply thoughtful. " 'Are you interested chiefly In the romantic type of playr I asked, thougn I thought I knew the answer myself. " 'No,' said Mr. Goodman. 'My chief interest is in modern drama. Just now, frankly, it is turning toward moving pictures. I am -one of those who think there ie a great future for the moving picture drama, not only in the field of action, but in the field of ideas, too. Not many years ago a man zig-zagging down the street with a crowd chasing him was the popular- conception of a moving picture. Now all sorts of plays plays that depend on more than mere speed and action are being wonder fully staged and tremendously success ful. Of course the subtlest Ideas can not, -I suppose, be expressed in pictures. Nor will the picture ever take the place of stage plays. Shaw and Pinero will never get on the screen. -Nor the full force of Hauptmann. even in a drama of such simple lines and elemental character as "The Weavers." Shakes peare, I should eay, would get across very well, on the whole. " 'I think in the long run' moving pictures will prove a great thing for the stage at large. They are creating an interest that is wholly unprece dented in plays and the theater. They are bringing the drama home to peo ple in a way that is sure to react favorably on the whole business. I do not share the current fears for the fu ture of the legitimate stage.' New Play Under Way. "Mr. Goodman is now at work on a new play, but he feels reticent about discussing it in detail. 'It's not a ro mantic thing, though,' he said. 'It's a modern play. I'm a good deal more in terested in plays that deal with mod ern situations. It never does a writer any good to palm off old stuff on the public, and it isn't fair to the public either.' " 'An ordinary play Is out of date in two years. Some of the revivals of re cent years have proved that an old dish served up a second time hasn't the same flavor. There are fashions in plays that change every couple of years. Public interest runs in waves. First we have a wave of interest in sex plays, then in crook plays, then in war plays. But a sex play served up this year has to have a different twist to it to go. " 'This doesn't apply to the best things. Shaw doesn't go out of date. The keen characterization, the 6heer brilliancy of the lines, make his plays independent of current styles in sub ject matter. But most of us aren't Shaws or Pineros or Gilberts.' "With sure prophetic vision Mr. Goodman talked about the coming play, the next wave of development in the changing drama. " 'The coming play will be a sex play with the sex left out.' he eaid. 'By that I mean that its subject will be the re lation of men and women, but the con ventional tangle will cease to play the part they have played. Even now we see changes. People are getting sick of the commonplace triangle. They are getting sick of sentimentalizing or moralizing over the erring woman. An indiscretion in a woman's life no longer makes dramatic meat. The fact that a woman has or has not been indis creet is of small interest in itself. Peo ple don't laugh at suffrage any more; they don't thrill over that sort of sex discussion. Mather Resides In Portland. " 'What is of interest is the whole relation of men and women; the part women will have in that relation; whether theirs is the positive or the negative force in sex. . Roughly, I should say that would be the basis of the coming play. At any rate, there will be a change.'" Mr. Goodman is married to a New York girl and they have two young children, a boy and a girl. His mother is Mrs. ' M. Goodman, who is now in San Francisco on a visit, but whose residence is in Portland. HIb brothers are Joseph and Maurice Goodman, of Portland; Fr. A. B, Goodman, formerly of Mexico and now located in New, York, and three sisters, Mrs. George Alexander, Miss Rose Goodman and Miss Esther Goodman, of Portland. PROMIVENT SHIPBIILDER LAID TO REST. IS Captain Thomas J. Bulger. Captain, Thomas J. Bulger, vet- i eran shipbuilder, who died at his 1 home. 3104 Third street, Wednes- day night following a short ill- ness, was buried at Riverview Cemetery yesterday, funeral serv- J ices being held at the home at 1 8:30 and at St. Lawrence Church 1 at 9 o'clock. i Captain Bulger was long prom- i Inent in" shipbuilding" both it j Portland and at Puget Sound and j at British Columbia ports. He I was born in St. Johns. Newfound- 4 land, in 1S27. The first part of t his career he spent actively in J the command of different vessels, J some of which he owned. ' He was 1 also for a time In the service of 2 the Canadian Pacific, retiring in 4 1903. i Captain Bulger was in his 90th 1 year. J is i it j it, -tv -i! AGATE BEACH IS SPOT FOR HUMAN REST AND ISOLATION IN WINTER With Only Breakers and Chirping Birds Making Sounds, Colonel Hofer Finds Contentment and Recreation for Mind Freed From Slavery and Society for While- 55-, 3- vj . wO.., v 7i?-v - ,JLcrr7v- Of J- Jo& jPocA. A sfyOoe-m Safely Cv: OT&fhosrr BY E. HOFER. AGATE BEACH. Or.. Jan. 8. (Spe cial.) Newport in Winter has charms no pen can describe. After a day of rain the sky clears in great blue spaces, with white clouds edged with blue and black sailing across. To the south hangs a great drop curtain of descending rain. Table Mountain showing through, while in the distance gleams the snowcap on Mary's peak. The air is fresh, cool, clear, crisp and bracing. Everything is washed as clean as in a new-made, spotless and dustless world. Under a stiff wind out at sea are whitecaps as far as the eye can see. On the beach the breakers lash the shoreline for a quarter ot a mile. After one heavy storm the sky cleared, the waves died down and the big stars came out. A sharp frost coated the green shrubs and ferns and dry grasses with silver and when the sun rose out of a clear white-blue sky the effect was like fairyland. The roar of the ocean had died down, the angry sound of breakers muffled by the land breeze. Out at sea occasionally a great storm wave came rolling in. Camping on a mountain elevation the stars seem much nearer, and you see twice as many. Fewer stars Seen From Sea. So at the sea level the sky seems farthest away. You see fewer stars and they are sown much more 'thinly across the heavens. But the great dome of the sky by day or- night is wider and its arch is on a larger scale than inland. One horizon is always rimmed by the ocean, the other rests on the mountains. After a great storm the gigantic cloud masses assume violet, pink and smoky-topaz colors on the edges of the open blue Spaces. The beaches are not so beautiful as in Summer. At places great boulders are scattered about. Lines of reef show up through the sands like worn down snags and molars of some great jaw ready to crunch a luckless ship that goes ashore in a storm. And they have eaten up many a good bottom along this graveyard of the Pacific. Jump-off rock is but a thin shell whose arch may crumble before Spring. The erosion of the ocean shore is, shown by the photographs taken by H. L. Thomas about 30 years apart. This rocky headland once Jutted into the ocean about 100 feet high. Now at high tide it is surrounded by water, cut off 200 feet from shore and the waters twice a day dash over it. Pio neer visitors at this beach will remem ber that 25 or 30 years ago tramping on the beach north of Newport was in tercepted by this headland and the trail over the Jump-Off meant a climb over a ridge 100 feet high. This ridge has all been cut away and 'only the harder rock left standing supporting a frail natural bridge. This rock stood up once like a great fortress, barricaded by the sandstone bluff. It is worn down to barely 30 feet above low tide. At high tide it swims in deep water, and long, long since the sea won its fight and sent its waves dashing over its top. The arch is cracked, the base is seamed and rent and like human hopes, it will soon come tumbling into the brine. Legends Lurk in Name. There are legends linking its name with Indian exploits, and it is probably well-known to more men, women and children of Western Oregon than any one landmark along the ocean front of Western Oregon. A Winter sunset at the ocean has all the charms of a beautiful woman an gered. The colors are deeper. The blues are bluer and the reds are redder. The yellows are saffron and one sees the real orange that seldom comes in the sky. Copper red and hard metallic colors appear that are never seen in Summer. The sunset blushes die away and leave the angry goddess of de clining day a pale, cold abstraction, dif ficult to personify. For two nights the ground froze hard and my beach house, except in front of the fireplace, was like a refrigera tor. Agate Beach for three miles around the lighthouse head, is a bird reserve, under the state -law and no shooting is allowed. The birds are growing tame. to. 00- hearing no firearms discharged in the hands of man and frosty mornings brousrht them around the house in flocks. There were two kinds of robins, bluejays, flickers and hedge sparrows, and they dined royally off the leavings of one man's kitchen scraps. After two frosty nights snow began (o fall Friday afternoon and Saturday morning the beaches and sand dunes were immense snow drifts. The white foaming breakers beat on snow-white shores, dotted with dark foliage. The seagulls flew about, rob bed of any resting place but the roll ing surf. After a frosty night. New Year's morning broke perfectly clear. Tho bay and river. above Yaquina was an unruffled mirror, reflecting the snow clad mountains and feathery frostwork and snowy branches of the evergreen forest In the smallest detail, inverted pictures of sights not occurring here once in 10 years Srenlc Highway Being Built. Lincoln County, too, is building a scenic highway, cutting a road above the beach, blasting the rough rocks, bridging gulches, and spanning can yons with trestles. The section from Newport to North beach beyond the Lighthouse is completed except in front of Monterey. At Little Creek a hair pin curve swings up the gorge, through a grove of spruces a hundred feet high, and then doubles out around the bluff to Big Creek. The road is laid on beautiful curves and easy- grades and will be fine for motoring, each turn giving a different glimpse of the ocean. This highway, built by a thinly pop ulated Coast county, for the pleasure of visitors and Summer tourists from the interior, is as great an undertaking in its way as the great scenic boule vard on the Columbia. I have just concluded my annual midwinter holiday week at my beach house, Madinore. on the wildest piece of rocky coast between Cape Perpetua and Cannon Beach. City folk will say WIFE OF HOOD RIVER JUSTICE OF PEACE LAID TO REST. T I": is Mrs. A. C. Back. HOOD RIVER. Or.. Jan. 22. (Special.) Funeral services for Mrs. A. C. Buck, wife of the Justice of the Peace for this dis trict, were held this week from the Missionary and Alliance chapel. Rev. Anthony S. Donat, pastor of the Riverside Congre gational Church, officiated. Mrs. Buck, whose maiden name was Mary A. Weaver, had been an invalid for several years. She was born October 15, 1848, in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. In addition to her husband she is survived by a daughter. Miss Nettie M. Buck, of Portland, and a son. Sherman E. Buck, of La Grande. ... V 1 what are the charms at tiio seashore in Winter, when the days are short, mostly a dull leaden gray, the nighta dark and long and not a sound but the ceaseless orchestra of the surf and the cabaret of the white-skirted breakers dancing on the reefs? Isolation Greatest Charm. Well, the air is cool and refreshing, there is a little warmth in the sun as It breaks through the mists and swings around low in the southern sky scarce ly two hours high above the horizon. But the greatest charm of all is to get away from business, from people, from newspapers, piug up the telephone, cut out the electric light and realize your self. For those who could endure it, a week of lonely isolation would prove a great blessing. To get cooled off men tally, to live a week day and night in the softs., sounds of nature, with no one looking at you. hearing no one talk, and not talking for others to hear, is a mental relaxation for which this writer (and probably all who know him) is profoundly grateful. In the words of Wordsworth, "the world is too much with us." Its de mands reduce us to the common level. Existence in a competitive state im plies conformity, the obliteration of the individual. We cease to be as God made us, men and women, and exist only in the moss. Isolation recalls a man to himself. He realizes that he la a human individual with an expanding soul. . No wonder Emerson and Thoreau were able to produce philosophy that will refresh our spirits through all time. Emerson lived on an unap proachable mountain top of intellectual exaltation. His mind dwelt on the serene heights where few could climb to interrupt him with their babble. Thoreau lived by his pond at Walden with no interruptions but the chatter of the squirrels and the querulous call of the jay. That is the philosophy of Isolation at the seashore or in the mountains. You get rid of your false self that society has Imposed on you. There la time to live, breathe, think and sleep and eat in a natural way. You are not the slave of the town clock. You form hours and habits of your own, eat when you are hungry and sleep when you are sleepy. Take the average human beings and they do not live their own lives. So ciety lives their lives. Their family and the struggle for existence is three-aaurters. The other quarter Is swallowed between church, party and newspaper. The party gives us ready made Ideas. The church supplies form ulated religion. The newspaper read year in and year out furnishes 'ideas. So the only hope to do any thinking or let your mind work unrestrained Is to isolate yourself. If a hundred of the really brainy men and women (do not blush) of Oregon could be Isolated in the remote places where nature is ma jestic and beautiful for only one month in the year, there would be a new school of writers born and possibly poets and artists. The one hundred, if they had anything in them, would come back more nearly themselves and freshened with hope that God's work is not all a failure. TRUCK LOAD IS LIMITED Marshfield Regulates Traffic to Protect Paving. MARSHFIELD. Or., Jan. 22. (Spe cial.) Various citizens having property adjoining the downtown streets on which motor-trucks are drawing trailers for transportation of logs have protested from time to time against the. unusual damage which results from the traffic and the City Council, after wrestling with the problem for several months, passed an ordinance limiting the loads the loggers shall haul and prescribing the speed at which the trucks shall travel. No load may be over 10,000 pounds in weight nor may they be hauled over the paving at a speed greater than five miles an hour. -Jr ' ''3