rth, and the well, by this time one blazing
mass. Fire thus cut off from Air succumbed, and the battle was over.

"There was no one hurt that time," pursued Friend Williams, in a tone of
airy reminiscence; "but mostly at our fires there'll be two or three
people burned up, and more women than men, I've noticed. Either it's
their clothes, or they get scared and don't look out for themselves. Now
there was the Widow McClintock owned that farm above here. She was worth
her hundreds of thousands of dollars, but she _would_ put kerosene on
her fire to make it burn. So one day it caught, and she caught, and in
half an hour there was no such thing as Widow McClintock on Oil Creek.
Still all the women keep right on pouring kerosene into their stoves,
and every little while one of them goes after the Widow.

"Then there was a woman who sent to the refinery for a pail of alkali to
clean her floor. The man thought he'd get benzine instead; and just as
he got into the house, the fire from his pipe dropped into it, and the
whole shanty was in a blaze before the poor woman knew what had
happened. The stupid fool that was to blame got off, but the woman
burned up.

"Then there was a woman whose house was afire, and she would rush back,
after she had been dragged out, to look for her pet teacups, and _she_
was burned up. And so they go."

Sometimes also the tanks of crude oil take fire, and these
conflagrations are said to present a splendid spectacle,--the resinous
parts of the oil burning with a fierce deep-red flame and sending up
volumes of smoke, through which are emitted lightning-like flashes
exploding the ignited gas.

Like some other things, including people, this unappeasable substance
conceals its terrors beneath a placid exterior, and lies in its great
tanks, or in shallow pits dug for it in the earth, looking neither
volcanic nor even combustible, but more like thin green paint than
anything else, except when it has become adulterated with water, when it
assumes a bilious, yellow appearance, exceedingly uninviting to the
spectator. In this case it is allowed to remain undisturbed in the tank
until the oil and water have separated, when the latter is drawn off at
the bottom.

Wandering one day among groves of derricks and villages of tanks,
Miselle and her guide came upon a building containing a pair of
truculent monsters in a high state of activity. These were introduced to
her as a steam force-pump and its attendan