The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-09-02

passing of the straw hat, the vacation season and the summer girl, but it offers compensation in the arrival of the Ostrea virginica, the well and fa- vorably known mollusk belonging to the lamollibranchiate genus Ostrea, family of Ostreidae, and commonly called the oyster. Ostrea virginica has often been accused of harboring ty phoid germs, but these attacks on it's fair name have not apprectably dinin- fshed the number of its votaries, and most Sourmets are still inclined to agree with the scnoo1-boy who wrote that '"T1se oyster is the king of beasts Millions of oysters are now being ten derly reared and fattened to supply the demand that begins on the first of September and continues with unabat- ed voracity until the last of April
 Rex Beach, whose stories of the ge- lid Northland have made him one Of the most popular and postpaid of American novelists, celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday yesterday. He was born at Atwood Mich, Sept. 1, 1877, and was christened Rex Filing wood. His youth was spent in semi tropical Florida, and he was educated at Rollins College in that state. At nineteen he went to Chicago to study law, but the legal profession did not appeal to him, and he abandoned it to go to Alaska, where he became a miner and. prospector. A big, two- listed, hard-Hghting chap, he quickly won the respect of the northern pion- eers, and from the very first he prov ed that he was no tenderfoot but a fu1l-f1edged '-sourdough.''
 On one occasion Beach staked out two claims near Dawson that proved to be among the richest in the Yu- kon, but he lost them before their value was realized. Except for that he might have become a bloated mill Iionaire, and never have written a line.
 Necessity spurred Roach to his maid en literary effort. With Dave King, his first and frmest Alaska friend, he staked out a claim that was rich in prospects, but nothing more With the coming of winter Beach and King found themselves in Nome, stone broke. With starvation staring them in the face, Beach hit upon a scheme to make some money. Going to the own CT of a Nome theatre, the stranded go1dseekers proposed to write and stage a drama The amusement mag nate consented to put on the "dran- mer'' on a percentage basis, and Beach went to work. Within a few hours he had completed the play. Several bar room loafers. a number of Indians and the wife of the theatre manager made up the cast, and two days were spent in rehearsals. Both King and Beach were members of the Arctic Brother
 
 en masse at the premiere of Beach's play, and greete deVery sentence with storm of applause.
 When Beach returned to Chicago af- ter his first northern experience he was penniless, and looking for job, when he met a man who was paid $10 each for short stories which he sold to syndicate. That looked like easy money to the examiner. and he decided to take a whtrl at the game. Although I.s-- <7 f1T1I <1f fT70 nat Tia1 for Alaska yarns, he laid the scene of his first story in the Southwest, country he had never visited. It was entitled +'The Cowboy and the Colonel, and within three weeks he sold it for $50. He was equally successful with his other literary efforts and in 1905 he wrote a novel, sfPardners," which was fairly successful. This was fol- lowed in 1908 by 'FThe Spoilers which made his reputation, and of which over rier'' was even mere successful, and '%The Silver Hoard'' and "Ne' 'er-do- wel1'' made fortunes for the author.
 MT. Beach now gets $15,oo0 for the serial rights of novel, and his total income from each book is well over the hundred thousand mark. He has an established price of $1,000 for a short story or magazine article, and the demand at that price is far ahead of the supply.
 SucCeSSIu1 as ne mas OS6nS MT Beach has admitted that he does not like to write and that he finds it hard work. eff I hadn't been driven to it by poverty he has said, 'fI should probably never have written line. And every time have finished a book I have thought should never be able to write another It always seems to me that I am writing myself out and that [ have nothing more to say, but invariably now ideas pop into my head, and I am off again
 The author has been spending the Summer at Lake Hopatcong, where he has completed his new Alaskan story, to be published soon.
 That a man of the future will be l minus hair, teeth and little toe, and that he will have bu1g1ng brow and a tiny jaw, is the prediction of Prof. Frederick Starr, the world-fanous an thropologist of the University of Chi cago. Prof Starr, whose standing as a scientist is recognized by savants ev- anywhere, is a clergyman son and was born in Auburn, N. Y., hfty-fiVe years ago to-day. He has been con nected with the Winday City univer- sity over twenty-five years, and dur | ing that period he has done field work | in many countries, especially in Mex l ico. He rounded up the group of the Ainu, the aboriginaIs of Japan, for the 1 St. Louis exposition, and in 1905 led an expedition inti the Congo Free State, where he investigated the hab- 1 it's, customs and conditions of twen- 1 ty-eight tribes.
 Two distinguished French acadenni-