Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1922-10-18
AS ONE WOMAN SEES 1T
An Evening Deliberately Given Over
to Just Talk Was a Quest for
Adventure Which Ended in
an Oil Field
BY SARAH ID. LOWRIE
WE WERE laughing the other night owe

! cess. "Just talk as the aftermath Of food
| Is horror of anticipation too great to be
! borne. An adjournment to the play or the
movies or bridge or dance or at the worst
a professional amuser are the only thinkable
solutions of getting through an evening when
one entertains ones friends.
1t Is not that the younger generation can
not talk. and talk nmusingly. but the mere
towards of them all"
Yet could they but realize It, talk to pass
the time has real adventure IN It. 1t is a
| great gamble, to be sure, but lucky numbers
do turn up With enough frequency to give
one the gamblers fever to try again.
The thing that is continually interesting
me in Just talk is the curious way II has
Of being apropos the questions that the days
experiences have turned uppermost.
l had case in point last evening when
dincd In company with some nine persons,
who were MS diverse In their interests, pre-
sumably, as they were In their life occupa-
tons: at least the men of the group about
the dinner table were diverse; suppose,
however, their wives had a proprietary in.
terest in their husbands specially and could
, be counted on to talk shop intelligently at
pinch
No one was talking shop ms 1t happened
with any particularly. 80 that what fell to
my lot to piece together into an Ineligible
whole was in its way the more remarkable.
TT BEGAN with my own preoccupation
L earlier In the day with the difference be-
tween the present cost Of gasoline and the
dividend which the Standard OIL Company
had lately announced.
Later in the day had listened to the
grave prognostications Of an Englishman on
the present Near East war crisis, which he
insisted was actually fight about oil. That
Is, 1t is the undevelOped oil In Asia Minor
we'll rs in Russia, that makes the world like
family dividing up the personal estate of
near and not dear relative.
One motion on the part of any one that
has the semblance Of a grab will bring on a
melee of 'catch as catch can" Well, had
oil rather on the brain. but not to the extent
that l wanted to utter monologue on the
subject. any more than I wanted to heQr n
discussion on the fate of Turkey. or the fate
of Europe with too much Turkey.
So when I found myself talking to DR.. TAFT
Mckenzie, the physician sculptor, I was
glad when the talk turned naturally and
serenely to description on his side of his
old home town in Canada, somewhere in the
province of Ottawa. He had been sum-
moned there by the town fathers to make the
war memorial of the forty five boys who had
lost their lives overseas from that small CEN
ter of patriotism of something over 1000
inhabitants.
He described the place as full of interest
for him still, because Of the intelligent social
group that maintained itself there in sur
rounding country of farms and farming folk.
They were Scotch, who had emigrated during
the depression after the Napoleonc wars.
well-to-do and we'll equipped farmers. who
homesteaded hundreds Of acres apiece of
forest land and in the second generation
built substantial stone houses, and in the
third had gardens and comfortable luxuries
OF identifying sort. His father had been
the minister and established the first church
to take over the charge and establish
manSe and family in it,
A IL this was far enough from oil, and l
"A found myself asking DR.. Mckenzie what
he thought was the reason the substantial
families. of his boyhood had given place to
tenant farmers, the younger generation of
the old sort having gone west or to the
States, leaving the countryside 20 to waste,
or at lrast less carefully kept up than in
the old days--as he had described it, palngs
gone and orchards going and the gardens a
thing of the past.
He told me that the great crop Of many
such places In Canada today Is not farm
stuff. but what the Irish call peat
And then he went on to remark that the
into fuel in the shape of portable briquettes
was solving not only Canada S coal problem,
but some Of her oil problems us we'll.
He said that the Government had been
forehanded enough to realize that with
neither of these commodities--oil or coal--in
gerously dependent on other countries to face
the future with much hope of competing sue
ceSsfully. He said that one Of Canada's
scientists had been employed to experiment
with the fuel qualities of the waste bog lands
Of the country, with the result that very
practical article had been produced, 80 that
for small price and as the result of easy
labor above ground n substitute for coal had
resulted that was both portable and
abundant. In fact, from the earth Of her
Galds ('opoda haa ov0lvpd har f,,o1 for ro,,,
to come.
NOV that the conversation should have
~ taken this turn from one learned in the
arts was sufficiently piouant. but that my
other neishbor. Captain q, John o'Br!en, Of the
take up the same tale when he sauntered
over to have q chat later in the evening, was
even more Of an adventure into the unex-
pected.
He began by saying casually that tomor.
row he was bound for Montreal, where he
had an appointment to see a man named
Moore I think he snid. and then he added
meditativey. as though 1t was a matter in
which | was unlikely to have an interest
''He was employed by the Canadian Gov.
briquettes that could be used as fuel in
stead of coal or OIL" and then seeing that
looked intelligent and even interested, sup.
pose, he added:
I'VE can solve tne Iuel problems for
Florida by doing the same thing with the
muck that is the top layer of land down with
US in the Everglade country"
He calculated moment and then sue
gested that something like 1000, 900 900 tons
could be got off the waste lands available
near the new town he Is starting-Clewiston
near the head of Lake OkceChobce. OnIv
I gathered that they have plenty of oil down
in Florida; in fact. 1t seemed to be his idea
that they would use oil with the muck in
the manufacture Of the briQuettes.
The briquettes as fuel would save the oil
on a large scale for other purposes and
hugely facilitate Ilorida's manufacturing
and add immensely to the States productive.
ness and capability Of supporting a yerv
large population.
For with oil and with what is eoutv,,ant
to coal, and with the swamps drained off
or being drained off and trenendouslv rich
farm lands left in the place of stnpnant
waters with her climate and her tourist ac.
commodations. not to speak of her oronpes
and other fruits the state has very great
r,,,,,,o M we'll ms an imnorto N, ,,,az'' e''"'