Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/489

 the coloring is a sort of Venetian blue. ... An unusually rich coloring is utilized in a boat and water scene in oils. . ..

He performed more work in each of several fields than most men in a lifetime can perform in one. He could go to such an occupation of pure beauty as has just been described, or could take up the composition of a poem, after having been applauded by an I. W. W. meeting. The Oregonian could change its mood, too. In the issue of November 30, 1909, it said in an editorial:

Mr. C. E. S. Wood stirred the enthusiasm of the I. W. W. members in a Portland meeting last Sunday by declaring himself an anarchist, for which he was rewarded with loud applause and yells. Said Mr. Wood: "I work with the Democratic Party because it is nearer my ideals than others. Yet that Party would be the first to deny to me the title of Democrat. I don't want it. I am an Anarchist. That is my ideal! [Great applause and yells]. I believe in the Anarchist theory that land should be held only by those who possess and use it. [Applause]. So I work with the single-taxers."

The Colonel—such he is sometimes called—is lithe in adjusting himself to the varying degrees of wealth and social status.

As attorney for one of the biggest land monopolies in the West—a wagon road company in Eastern Oregon—he stands champion of a land system far more monopolistic than that which he denounced amid cheers last Sunday. As attorney for the gas monopoly in Portland, he stands defender of special and capitalistic privilege that enrages the Industrial Workers of the World. As councilor of big banks and rich estates and as frequenter of aristocratic, exclusive social strata the Colonel might seem disqualified from being the boon companion of rowdy, feted Have-nots