primitive vegetation to the coal oil stage, until he
knew all about it. Then he wrote to his cousin and said, "Now I
understand the oil business." And his cousin replied to him, "All right,
then, come on."

That man, by the record of the county, sold his farm for eight hundred
and thirty-three dollars--even money, "no cents." He had scarcely gone
from that farm before the man who purchased it went out to arrange for
the watering the cattle and he found that the previous owner had
arranged the matter very nicely. There is a stream running down the
hillside there, and the previous owner had gone out and put a plank
across that stream at an angle, extending across the brook and down
edgewise a few inches under the surface of the water. The purpose of the
plank across that brook was to throw over to the other bank a
dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle would not put their noses
to drink above the plank, although they would drink the water on one
side below it. Thus that man who had gone to Canada had been himself
damming back for twenty-three years a flow of coal oil which the State
Geologist of Pennsylvania declared officially, as early as 1870, was
then worth to our State a hundred millions of dollars. The city of
Titusville now stands on that farm and those Pleasantville wells flow
on, and that farmer who had studied all about the formation of oil since
the second day of God's creation clear down to the present time, sold
that farm for $833, no cents--again I say, "no sense."

But I need another illustration, and I found that in Massachusetts, and
I am sorry I did, because that is my old State. This young man I mention
went out of the State to study--went down to Yale College and studied
Mines and Mining. They paid him fifteen dollars a week during his last
year for training students who were behind their classes in mineralogy,
out of hours, of course, while pursuing his own studies. But when he
graduated they raised his pay from fifteen dollars to forty-five dollars
and offered him a professorship. Then he went straight home to his
mother and said, "Mother, I won't work for forty-five dollars a week.
What is forty-five dollars a week for a man with a brain like mine!
Mother, let's go out to California and stake out gold claims and be
immensely rich." "Now," said his mother, "it is just as well to be happy
as it is to be rich."

But as he was the only son he had his way--they always do; and they
sold out in