f this fair world, with its mountains like
caterpillars dozing on the page--for so do maps present themselves to my
fancy--_he_ would see merely the blueprint and huge specification of oil
production and consumption. The dotted cities would suggest no more than
agencies in its distribution, and they would be pegged in many colors--as
is the custom of our business efficiency--by way of base symbolism of
their rank and pretense; the wide oceans themselves would be merely
courses for his tank ships to bustle on and leave a greasy trail. Really,
contrary to my own experience and sudden cure, one might think that such
an oleaginous stream of talk, if directed in atomizer fashion against the
nostrils of the listener, would serve as a healing emulsion for the
complaint I then suffered with.

Be these things as they may, what I can actually vouch for is that when
this fellow had set himself and opened a volley of facts on me, I was
shamed to silence. There was a spaciousness, a planetary sweep and
glittering breadth that shriveled me. The commodity which I dispensed was
but used around the corner, with a key turned upon it at the shadowy end
of day against its intrusion on the night. But his oil, all day long and
all night too, was swishing in its tanks on the course to Zanzibar. And
all the fretted activity of the earth was tributary to his purpose. How
like an untrimmed smoky night-candle did my ambition burn! If I chanced to
think in thousands it was a strain upon me. My cerebrum must have throbbed
itself to pieces upon the addition of another cypher. But he marshaled his
legions and led them up and down, until it dazed me. I was no better than
some cobbler with a fiddle, crooked and intent to the twanging of his E
string, while the great Napoleon thundered by.

The secret channels of the earth and the fullness thereof made a joyful
gurgle in his thoughts. And if he ever wandered in the country and ever
saw a primrose on the river's brim--which I consider unlikely, his
attention being engaged at the moment on figuring the cost of oil barrels,
with special consideration for the price of bungs--if this man ever did
see a primrose, would it have been a yellow primrose to him and nothing
more? Bless your dear eyes, it would have been a compound of
by-products--parafine, wax-candles, cup-grease, lamp-black, beeswax and
peppermint drops--not to mention its proper distillation into such rare
odors as might be sold at so much a bott