in the last two years four palatial theatres in hithertofore unused theatrical territory. Each of these cost from $600,000 to $1,000,000 to erect; all are open from 10 a. m. to 11 p. m., and it is a fair estimate to state that 30,000 persons pay an average of ten cents each in each house every week.

Will the low-priced fever operate against the best plays presented at the scale prevailing in theatres of the first grade? This is the problem confronting the play-producers of today, and there are many who believe that instead of meaning ultimate disaster to the older method of catering to the public's entertainment, the millions of new play-goers and amusement seekers, originally lured in to the cheap

theatres by the attractive scale of admission prices, may yet prove the salvation of the stage calling.

But the play producers must be brought to realize that these millions represent a new public that is on the alert for "bargains," such as Mr. Powers offered with an immediate response.

It would seem that the popular theatre of tomorrow will be one of large seating capacity, that will admit of "bargains" in seat prices.

Aside from these the tendency is toward "The Little Theatre" seating about three hundred, where the intimate play will be seen by that minority public to whom $2.00 a seat is not a hardship.

MINNIE IRVING.

T

HE thermometer registered 112 in the shade that day. One writes it with hesitation, lest the printed figures convey an impression of discomfort beyond the actual fact, the dryness of our desert. air making it possible to work unoppressed by temperatures that elsewhere would be unendurable. It was unmistakably hot to-day, however. One deliberately avoided the open stretches in moving about the ranch; and down in the apricots Luvo and Aernas made frequent pilgrimages to the dripping olla, swung in the leafage of the end tree, as if even in their seasoned old bodies an unusual process of evaporation were going on.

When it was found at luncheon that my sister and I would have to make a trip to the village on business, we became the objects of general commisseration. It is a casual affair with us on most days, that seven mile drive across the valley to the rambling village of San Acacia, but today we were carefully provisioned for the ordeal ahead of us. A thermos bottle full of hot tea and sandwiches wrapt in a damp napkin were stowed under the seat for our refreshment; we were given the choice of three sunshades and practically all the family hats, and the household gathered about the dogcart to see us off.

Having braced ourselves for the worst, we took a kind of pleasure in observing the effects of the heat along the way. Bare stubble fields fairly smoked; the occasional patches of alfalfa were wilted beneath the unrelenting sun. And when now and again we passed a clump of shade the relief was one of sight rather than of sense, for grateful as was the cessation of the glare, the air under the trees was more oppressive than in the open.

Yet the drive began to develop pleasant aspects. The air, burned clear of every drop of moisture, was light and delicious to the lungs. From the unclaimed lands came the spice of baking sages, horehound, and the tonic Yerba Santa, whose viscid leaves had curled and humped their silvery backs against the sky, heralding to those versed in plant lore the intensity of the sun's fires above them. There was exhileration in in these these spice breaths, in their hot tang against our nostrils. The heat caressed our arms and throbbed against our necks; little. fiery breezes stirred our hair; we were hot through, yet comfortable.

Other discoveries too, we made about this hottest day. Never before had we seen such effects of color. Westward across the plain lies a Spanish ranch, bare and unlovely in glare of ordinary noontides. Now that treeless stretch was veiled in liquid. rose, the low cattle pond in its midst. was transformed by the shifting heat waves into a lake of flashing sapphire. Dun and violet hills stood out in bold relief against a sky of unfathomable blues. Their colors seemed not so much to belong to them as to be ethe'real mediums by which the wide prospect was enhanced for our delight.

Half way across the valley a low chain of hills rises up abruptly from the level ground. On their northern flank we came upon an Indian encampment under giant blue gums, pioneers of civilization in this corner of the plain. It was evidently not merely an affair of fruit picking season, for pains had been taken to make the spot habitable. The tents were disposed so as to take advantage of the shade, and a rough pavilion of palm branches had been erected beside the marshy brink of an abandoned flowing well. Against

the hillside across the road was a low adobe oven of rough cigar shape and fitted with a battered iron door. So completely did it tone in with the grey soil above that we should probably have missed this picturesque feature of the encampment but for the use to which it was being put. Three slim Indian lads were astride it in a row, brandishing horsehair ropes with which in turn they belabored their phlegmatic steed and lassoed the heads of the unresisting sages nearby, at the imminent risk of entangling each other. They were guiltless of any sort of garment, a fact which somehow seemed as natural to us as it did to the fat squaws, their mothers, busy at their hairdressing in the pavilion across the road. The sun evidently found it all right and proper, too, and caressed the shining little brown backs as if by some right immemorial.

We found the village quite empty, except for a large touring car drawn up beside the bank. Two Spanish ladies sat in the tonneau, chatting gaily through their bright swathings of veils, and they smiled at us with an air of pleasant comradship as we trotted up. Our business transacted, we escaped from the stifling bank as quickly as possible and driving past the shaded lifeless houses to the end of the village street pulled up under a fine old catalpa to have our tea. Northward simmered a long stretch of alkali, broken by the vivid green of the cottonwoods along the river bed; westward, down a white ribbon of road, lay the mesa, already gathering glorious tints from the declining

sun.

Never had sandwiches and tea tasted more delicious, and we lingered luxurously over the feast. The crumbs went to a mocking bird who had been eyeing us hungrily from a branch overhead; and having given the pony his refreshments at an unsanitary looking old drinking trough beside an empty cabin, we started upon our homeward way.

bly abated, and the valley was beginning to show signs of revived animation. Some Mexican squatters in the old Madero house had come out to the sagging verandah, where the women were rocking and fanning themselves with a languid grace that even the shabbiness of their surroundings could not dim. A romantic looking youth on the steps toyed carelessly with a guitar. The full flavor of his attitude was somewhat lost, however, by occasional interruptions to chase off a too inquisitive rooster from the bottom step.

At the first ranch outside of town they were irrigating, and the little streams along the brown furrows gave an aspect of coolness and comfort to the scene. Two middle aged women in neat white dresses, New Englanders, we judged them to be, were sewing on the tiny side porch, while a brindled tabby made her fastidious toilet on a cushion at their feet. The homely, settled comfort of the little group seemed oddly out of place in this fierce young desert country.

Much more in harmony with their surroundings were the campers by the abandoned well. The squaws had finished their hairdressing and were making tortillas as we passed, crooning hoarsely to the rhythmic slap of the dough as they tossed it up and down. From the mouth of the 'dobe oven glowed a crimson eye of fire, and one of the naked little riders was busy stoking its recesses with dry bits of greasewood from the hill above. Everywhere were signs of approaching night. By sundown the braves would begin to stroll home from work, dark face would flash greeting to dark face as they gathered for the common meal. Afterward they would sit awhile in the warm darkness, then turn to sleep with the rest of the world while the cool sea-wind wandered up through the western pass, bringing relief to the parched and weary earth, and the leaves of the Yerba Santa turned gently up again, whispering that the hottest day of the year was

T

HE YEAR 1898 marks the beginning of the latest era of Oregon literature. It was at this time that a new school clustering around the new Pacific Monthly magazine began to draw around it not only what was left of the pioneer group, but from the entire Pacific Coast. William Bittle Wells, who established the new periodical, combined literary instincts with the executive ability necessary to the handling of the business side of the magazine; and while the publication was in the interest of the development of the great Northwest, veins of promising literature began and continued to appear throughout its pages. A striking note

early and strong was that of Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who could easily turn from essay and politics to literary theme and discussion as in his lines on "October" to attractive verse. The names of Lute Pease, author of short stories of a Western flavor; of Porter Garnett, whose short and trenchant literary criticism compelled the respect of writers of all classes, and of Berton Braley, Adelaide Wilson and Charles Clark, whose poetry gave an esthetic tone to the magazine, are some (by no means all) who deserve a record.

Our story of this phase of Northwest literature begins, however, further back when the State was yet a