Evening Star Newspaper, March 23, 1930, Page 84

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 23, 1930. SN ¢ Prospectors with equipment and grub traveling by boat. and into the heart of the coal The timber in her national is estimated at 85,000,000,000 board feet. In addition to rail service through the heart re is today efficient airplane between the larger cities, with landing smaller ones, otherwise compared to what_it can be most effectively IP the strike at Poorman should turn out to be as magnificent as that at Nome or Fairbanks the Klondike the economic bal- ance of theYworld would be undisturbed. For, though we may look upon gold as something very precious and something to be sought for and most desired to be possessed, to those that handle it and to economists it is vothing more than a mineral and as turnips. Gold has a commercial value the same as anything else. At present it is worth about $20 an ounce. That is pure gold. Coming from the mine it may be worth 6, 8, 12, 15 dollars per ounce, as the case may be. Its price depends upon its purity. The prospector hunting for gold is like the truck gardener raising turnips. He goes to the owner of the store in the small Northern village and makes a deal with him whereby he receives prospecting equpiment and -rub, even after the manner of the truck gardener in the business of raising a crop of turnips. And then into the wilds he plunges He discovers gold or not. In either case —provided he has been trusted in the first instance f grub and equipment—he goes back to bill. (Perhaps he wants to go out a a new batch of supplies.) If he has Egz EE?E%E: value of it being determined bet accordance with its purity. However, if the prospector with the offer made gold stock he may to the nearest § venturous undertaking, it has its compensa- tions. The lure of the next pan is zlways uppermost in the mind of the prospector, the sunset over mountains unstained by tropical splendor and sensousness. Cold and privation are there, but with them the silent, majestic beauty of the North, clear, low-hung canopies A PLEA FOR INDOOR One of a Series of Sketches by the Leading Humorists of the Day. Another Will Appear in The Star’s ]llagazing at a Later Date. T might be supposed, by the vapid and unreflective, that the enthusiastic golfer would be, to some extent, up against it during the colder months. The fact is, however, that of the four seasons of the golfing year—Spring, when you Jose your ball in the unmown hay; Summer, when you lose it in the glare of the sun; Au- tumn, when you lose it under dead leaves, and Winter, when you have a sporting chance of not losing it at all—the last-named is, to the thoughtful golfer, quite the pleasantest. It is glorious, no doubt, on a lovely afternoon in Summer, with the sun shining down and a gentle breeze tempering the heat, to slice your ball into the adjacent jungle and to feel that you are thereby doing a bit of good to a small boy who needs the money which he will get when—directly your back is turned—he finds and sells the missing globule. It is thrilling, on one of those still, crisp days in the Fall, to drive off the tee at 11:15 and potter about the course till 12:48, turning over leaves with a niblick in the hope that each Jeaf de the one under which your ball has But both these pleasures are morning in the Winter. In Winter you get good visibility. you stand. Before you a prairie de- nuded of all vegetation. The trees, into correct driving. The ball soars in a lofty are, edging off to the right. Sixty yards from the tee it touches earth, and bounds another 50, when it hits the frozen surface of a puddle and skids against a tree trunk, a farther 90 yards ahead. The angle at which it hits the tree just - connects your slice to ection, and there you are, in a dead straight line with the pin, with a two-hundred-and-thirty-yard drive to your credit. This is golf, in the true sense of the word. Even now, however, your happiness is not complete, You have omitted to take into con- sideration the fact that you are playing what are called Winer rules, which entitle you to tee your ball up in the fairway. So you re- move the pill from the cuppy lie.into which it has settled and look around you for a con- venient hillock. You can usually find a mole hill of a convenient height, and from this you propel the ball onto the green. The green is a trifle rough, perhaps, but, after-all, what does that matter? Experts will try to tell you otherwise, but every beginner knows that putting is a pure game of chance, and that you are just as likely to hole out over rough ground as over smooth, Of course, there are weeks in the Winter when golf on the links is impossible, unless you happen to be in such an advanced stage of mental decay that you can contemplate with equanimity a round in the snow with a red ball. The ordinary golfer, unequal to such excesses, will take, during these weeks, to indoor golf. There are several varieties of the indoor game. The first kind of indoor golf I got acquainted with is that played in stores, where profes- sionals give instruction at five dollars an hour. You stand on a rubber mat; the ball is placed on an ordinary doormat; and you swat it against a target painted on a mattress. ‘The merits of this plan are obvious. It is almost impossible not to hit the mat- tress somewhere, and it makes just as satis- factory a thud whether you hit it in the middle or in one of the outlying suburbs. And in in- door golf, as played in department stores, the thud is everything. This indoor instruction is invaluable. 1 may say that I, myself, am what INfluMo!lmtmlsmdylzomm. Sometimes I would get into difficulties at -1 boat of the gold rush days of *98 and ’99 discharging its passengers Gold mining in the Alaskan-Ruby dis- trict, site of the present strike. of heaven, still, placid streams rimmed by mountains covered with eternal snow. A lonely life, but withal one rich in the things life in a crowd has not and, one must always remember this, gold. Gold at the end, great round nuggets rolling out of a hillside or shaken out of pans and pans of dirt. From the time of the Assyrians and Egyp- tians it has been so and even beyond them, for long before man knew of any other metal he was fashioning out of gold ornaments ~nd household utensils and using it as a measure of value. All of which presages beforehand a searching for it throughout his abode in every quarter of the earth accessible to him, So far as is known the largest nugget of gold ever found loose in the earth was turned up at Victoria, Australia. It weighed 183 pounds. Its value was placed at $50,000. Placer gold—surface deposit gold—is the quickest of all mined, it being only necessary to wash it. Gold being heavy—quite heavy— sinks to the bottom as the soil or gravel is washed away. There it may be quickly and momentarily recovered. It is placer gold that breeds the rushes, rushes such as took place at Nome and in the Klondike and, back in the days of '49, in California. The - great gold-producing centers of the earth are in Africa, portions of the United States, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand and Russia. Africa produces over 40 per cent. The United States and Alaska around 20 per cent. At present there is something like $460,000,000 worth of gold produced annually. So Poorman, though it make a rich man, will still be Poor- man even should it prove as great a bonanza or El Dorado as California or Nome or the Klondike. GOLF—-B y Humorist P. G. Wodehouse Of course, the drawback to indoor golf is that it is so difficult to reproduce the same con- ditions when you get out on the links. I have been in a variety of lies, good and bad, in my time, but never yet have I had the luck to drop my ball on a doormat. Why this should be so it is hard to say. I suppose the fact is that, unless you actually pull the ball off the first tee at right angles between your legs, it is not easy to land on a doormat. And even then it would probably be a rubber doormat, which is not at all the same thing. But these indoor golf parlors that are spring- ing up here and there with imitation links in green cloth fail to stir the old Wodehouse sporting blood. Really exciting indoor golf is that which is played in the home. ‘Whether you live in a palace or a hovel, an indoor golf course, be it only nine holes, is well within your reach. A house offers greater facilities than an apartment, and I have found my game greatly improved since I went to live in the country. 1 can, perhaps, scarcely do better than give a brief description of the sport- ing, nine-hole course which I have recently laid out in my present residence. All authorities agree that the first hole on every links should be moderately easy, in order to give the nervous player a temporary and fictitious confidence. At Wodehouse Manor, therefore, we drive off from the front door—in order to get the benefit of the doormat—down an entry fair- way, carpeted with rugs, and without traps. The hole—a loving cup—is just under the stairs; and a good player ought to have no difficulty in doing it in two. The second hole, a short one, takes you into the telephone booth. This also is simple. Trouble begins with the third, a long, dog-leg hole through the kitchen into the dining room. ‘This hole is well trapped with table legs, kit- chen utensils and a moving hazard in the person of Clarence, the cat, who is generally wandering about the fairway. The hole is under the glass and china cupboard, where you are liable to be bunkered, if you loft your approach shot excessively. It is better to take your light iron and try a running-up approach, instead of becoming ambitious with the mashie niblick. The fourth and fifth holes call for no com- ment. There is only one danger—you may lose a stroke through hitting the maid, if she happens to be coming down the back stairs It is short, but tricky. just outside the bathroom door, you have loft the ball over the side of the bath tub, hol out in the little vent pipe at the end where the water.runs out. It is apparently a simple shot, but I have known many fine players who have taken threes and fours over it. It is a niblick shot, and to use a full swing with the brassey is courting disaster. The seventh is the longest hole on the course, Starting at the entrance of the best bed room, a full drive takes you to the head of the stairs, whence you will need at least two ‘more strokes to put you dead on the pin in the drawing room. In the drawing room the fairway is trapped with photograph frames—with glass, complete— these serving as casual water; and any one who can hole out on the piano in five or under is a player of class. Bogey is six, and I have known even such a capable exponent of the game as my Uncle Reginald, who is plus two on his hume links on Park avenue, to take 27 at the hole. But on that occasion he had the misfortune to be bunkered in a photograph of my Aunt Clara and took no fewer than 11 strokes with his niblick to extricate himself from it. The eighth and ninth holes are straighte forward, and can be done in two and three, respectively, provided you swing easily and avoid the canary's cage. Once trapped there, it is better to give up the hole without further effort. It is almost impossible to get out in less than 56, and, after you have taken about "0, the bird gets visibly annoyed. (Copyright, 1930y Fate of the June Bug. LAs'r year was “June bug” year, and it fole lows, according to the life cycle of this beetle, that this year will be white grub year. The bugs themselves are fairly destructive, feeding mostly upon the foliage of trees, but they are comparatively harmless in the light of the destructive habits of their offspring, the white grubs. These grubs, sometimes called the grubworm, have a rather substantial taste in food, attacking such farm products as corm, timothy, beans and potatoes and, with the taste of an epieure, strawberries for dessert. ‘They may be easily combated by plowing the fields about the time they are going deen for Winter quarters. The exposure of the grubs ends fatally and is one of the most effective ways of disposing of them. Hogs turned loose to pasture in flelds prior to planting provide active allies in the campaign against the grubs, while the farmer who fools the June bug and plants his land to corn, clover or other crops, removes the weedy or small grain situation in which the bug prefers to lay its eggs.