ferson made a play of his own, and used it for several seasons with varying success. Realizing that it needed strengthening, he asked Dion Boucicault to rewrite it, and "Rip Van Winkle," as we know it, was first produced at the Adelphi Theater in London, September 4, 1865. A year later, September 3, 1866, he played it for the first time in America. The act with Hendrik Hudson's crew was

entirely his own, and no stage effect can be stronger than that scene in the mountains, with Rip's quaint talk the only

words heard amid the silence and the pantomimic gestures of the ghostly band.

In the older versions of the play Rip had been little more than a village sot, but Mr. Jefferson's version lifted him into the realm of poetry. You saw a lovable soul, weakened by habits of shiftlessness and drink, fully realizing its own weakness, but unable to resist temptation. You saw the man led away into the mountains with the dwarf and his barrel of schnapps, good-naturedly ready to help anybody who had a heavy load. You saw the glass offered him by the shade of Hendrik Hudson; you heard that touching "Don't leave me, boys!" as he sank down to his long sleep.

People used to tell Mr. Jefferson that it was a pity to let Rip drink the final toast at the end of the play, but he contended that the stage was not the place for a temperance sermon. The natural thing the artistic thing-for the old man to do was to take the glass when it was offered to him. There was no reason why his twenty years' sleep should have cured him of the drink habit. "Should Rip refuse the cup, the drama would become a temperance play," once wrote Mr. Jefferson. "I should as soon expect to hear of Cinderella striking for higher wages, or of a speech on woman's rights from Mother Hubbard, as to listen to a temperance lecture from Rip Van Winkle; it would take all the poetry and fairy-tale element completely out of it." Indeed, the whole play was a sermon. Robert Collyer wrote of it in 1868: "I never saw such power. I never remember such nature in any Christian pulpit that it was ever my privilege to sit under,

as in Joseph Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle. So simple, so true, so beautiful, so moral."

Mr. Jefferson has always preached the gospel of art as distinct from nature or realism. The actor must hold the mirror up to nature, but it must be a mirror and not nature itself. He has often been urged to make Rip more spectacular, to add a few Dutch windmills with real sails going 'round, to treble the number of ghosts, and, above all, to have a real dog Schneider. But he was a thorough artist, and he knew the value of his art. Once he was asked to write a little article about Schneider, and to give the public his idea of what kind of a dog Schneider was. He refused, because, as he said, it was better to let people have their own ideas about Schneider.

"Why, do you know," said Mr. Jefferson, "people have asked me why I didn't have a real Schneider on the stage, just as I used to when they were young. And I have had hard work to convince them that there never was a Schneider on the stage. They had created that dog out of my allusions to him, and why should I tell them my idea of Schneider, and perhaps destroy in their minds the vision of a real dog which they had been seeing for thirty years? And, besides, I could look behind the scenes—and I know there was no dog."

From 1866 to 1880 Mr. Jefferson seldom acted in anything but Rip. He produced "The Rivals" in the latter year, and in Bob Acres found another character that went straight to the hearts of the people. He was criticised for the slight changes he made in the original text-it was William Warren who remarked, " And Sheridan twenty miles away!"—but he felt that he was perfectly justified in developing the character of Bob and making him of more importance than his creator had intended. And he believed that no one would have approved his changes more heartily than Sheridan himself.

In this generation Mr. Jefferson was

MR. JEFFERSON ON HIS kept pretty much to the two parts of Rip and Bob, until quite recent years occasionally playing Dr. Pangloss in "The Heir at Law," Caleb Plummer in "Dot; or, The Cricket on the Hearth," and Mr. Golightly in "Lend Me Five Shillings." To his friends he sometimes confessed that he was afraid to try a new rôle. The risk of failure was too great. He was the dean of his profession, looked up to by every actor in the land, idolized by the public, sure of a crowded house whenever and wherever he appeared. As he grew older, too, he distrusted his memory.

Only once in many years, so far as the Spectator knows, had Mr. Jefferson essayed another part, and that was in the remarkable "all-star" benefit to Lester Wallace which took place at the Metropolitan Opera-House May 21, 1888. The play was "Hamlet," with Booth in the title rôle, Madame Modjeska as Ophelia, and such a cast as New York never saw before nor has seen since. Jefferson and Florence were the two grave-diggers, and the humor they got out of those parts will never be forgotten by the audience. One could see what a great artist Mr. Jefferson was-how tender his pathos, how exquisite his humor.

LOUISIANA PLANTATION

Mr. Jefferson was very fond of telling jokes on himself. He enjoyed the lady who tried to buy a paper of him as he stood one evening, rather shabbily dressed and with a bundle of papers under his arm, near the entrance to the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

In the elevator of that house occurred a very embarrassing episode in his life, more amusing in the telling than in the happening. A thick-set, brown-bearded stranger accosted him: "Mr. Jefferson, I believe."

"Yes, I am Mr. Jefferson."

"I had the pleasure of meeting you in Washington not long ago," continued the stranger.

The actor made a courteous response to the effect that he met so many people, but had a most unpleasant memory for names. "May I ask your name, sir?" "Ulysses S. Grant."

Mr. Jefferson used to say that he wouldn't have minded if the elevator had taken him down into the sub-cellar, with a coal-hole conveniently near.

Mr. Jefferson believed that if he had not been an actor, he would have been a painter, and perhaps "would have succeeded better." Painting had always

been to him a very great delight. He was at his best in landscape, and there is much true poetry and art in his work. He loved to depict Southern scenes the slumbering bayou, or the dense forest, with its great tree-trunks and drooping moss. He was one of a few to make what are called "monotypes"-sketches done in sepia and lard on a zinc plate, from which a single impression is printed on absorbent paper. The Spectator owns a "monotype," about twenty-four by sixteen inches in size, representing a ruined sugar-mill on a Southern plantation, which Mr. Jefferson painted in twenty minutes.

་ ་

He was interested in the lighter philosophies. The work of Prentice Mulford greatly attracted him at one time. He had had remarkable communications, as he believed, from the other worldenough, at any rate, to convince him that there was another world, and to make him confident that he should see again those he loved. He was a wonderful optimist, always cheerful, always looking for the brightness of life. He once told the Spectator that in all his thousands of miles of travel he had never been in a railway or steamship accident or seen one. The last letter which the Spectator received from Mr. Jefferson was reminiscent of their earlier friendship, and closed with these words:

How time goes on, so heedless of us all! What a short-lived creature is man (myself

Everybody loved him. Down at the Louisiana plantation they all loved him, from the Acadian overseer to the ponies who came into the kitchen to be fed. The Buzzards Bay fishermen loved him. The public made him the embodiment of the two characters with which they had for so many years associated him— Rip and Bob-for both of whom the pity that is akin to love is the predominating sentiment. And the public loved him, too, for himself. His autobiography was so human that it made every reader feel that he knew him well. His face was as familiar to one who met him on the street as if he had been a member of that person's own family. People always wanted to do things for him-and he himself was always doing for others.

At the hotel where he stayed when he was last in New York-a sick man, wasted and feeble, but with eye and mind as bright as ever-a lady who saw him seated in the elevator went up to him, as she neared her floor, gently touched his hand, and passed on. It was the embodiment of the feeling of a nation towards this man who had brought cheer to millions of hearts.

ple, the last Legislative Assembly in one week enacted laws that long agitation elsewhere has failed to procure. When it was proposed that the State should build and operate its own refinery, the plan was criticised as Socialistic in its tendency, but the Legislature appropriated the sum of $400,000 for this purpose, believing that it would be the best. guarantee of an unrestricted supply of refined oil at the lowest price to consumers, and would offer greatest protection to independent producers of crude oil in the State. It was seen that without other legislation a refinery would be useless, and to insure greater freedom from trust restraints the Legislature quickly enacted these supplementary laws:

Establishing a maximum freight rate for the transportation of crude oil by railroads and prohibiting rebates. This gives protection to the oil producer.

Forbidding discrimination by any person, firm, or corporation in the sale of any commodity at a less price in one place than in another, proper allowance being made for differences in distance. This insures fair competition throughout the State and applies to all classes of business.

Creating a railroad commissior of three State officers, with power to fix rates, tariffs, charges, classifications, and rules and regulations for all railroads in the State. This law permits the enforcement of the maximum freight rate.

Making pipe lines a common carrier for all oil producers, and fixing a schedule of charges for this enforced service. The Standard Oil Company, which owns all the pipe lines in the State, is made the servant of independent producers and refiners.

The hostility against the Standard Oil Company in Kansas was provoked by its employment of the same methods that brought ruin to independent producers and refiners in other States where the Standard was dominant. The people of Kansas are congratulating themselves that they saw their danger in time to avert disaster and prevent practically a confiscation of their oil field. The Standard's encroachment may be traced step by step, from the first discovery of oil in 1889, when the annual output was only five hundred barrels, to the present time, when millions of dollars are invested in property and improvements, and the output in 1904 was 5,599,054 barrels.

The firm of Guffy & Galey, known as field agents of the Standard, though claiming to be independent in their operations, came in the early '90's, set their drills at work, and in time leased about one million acres of land from Kansas farmers. In 1895 the Forest Oil Company, acting, it is believed, as a component part of the Standard Oil system, took over the holdings of Guffy & Galey. Neodesha was chosen as the center of operations, and, as an inducement for other persons to assist in developing the field, an oil refinery was built at that place. The Standard extended its operations over southeastern Kansas, feeling everywhere for oil, and expended a considerable amount of money in prospecting. For reasons best known to itself, the Standard allowed the bulk of its leases to lapse, and never afterwards renewed more than a small percentage of the aggregate oil lease area of Kansas. These first leases were legally imperfect, and gave the landowner a royalty of ten per cent. on all oil produced, but did not specify the amount or time of development. Leases now carry a royalty of one-eighth, and require an annual rental of 25 cents an acre when development is not under way.

The Standard was not to be permitted to remain in undisputed possession of any knowledge it might have of the underground resources of Kansas. In boring for natural gas in 1900, the town of Chanute struck oil. Fifty-one wells were sunk, and twenty-eight were producers. The discovery drew oil men from Pennsylvania and other States, and oil was found at other places, notably at Peru, where a fine pool was exposed. The crude oil was shipped to near-by markets and sold for fuel and lubricating purposes.

This traffic did not escape the watchful eye of the Standard Oil Company. In the development of the Standard's plans, the Prairie Oil and Gas Company was organized in 1900, and it absorbed the Forest Oil Company. W. J. Young, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, was elected president of the new company. On April 30, 1904, its capital stock was increased from $300,000 to $2,500,000.