g
from his path a wagon laden with coals.

Soon after, Miselle and her friends gladly bade farewell to Oil City,
leaving the scornful lady seated at the piano executing the charming
melody of "We're a band of brothers from the old Granite State."

Having entered the city by the hill-road, it was proposed to return
along the Creek, although, as Jamie candidly stated, the road "might,
like enough, be a thought worser than the other."

And it was.

Before the oil fever swept through this region, a man might have
travelled from the mouth of the Creek to its head-waters, and seen no
more buildings than he could have numbered on his ten fingers. Now the
line of derricks, shanties, engine-houses, and oil-tanks is continuous
through the whole distance; and thousands of men may be seen to-day
accumulating millions of dollars where three years ago the squirrel and
his wife, hoarding their winter stores, were the only creatures that
took thought for the morrow.

After its incongruous mixture of society, the social peculiarity of Oil
Creek is a total disregard of truth.

A mechanic, a tradesman, or a boatman makes the most solemn promise of
service at a certain time. Terms are settled, a definite hour appointed
for the fulfilment of the contract; the man departs, and is seen no
more. His employer is neither disappointed nor angry; he expects nothing
else.

A cart laden with country produce enters the settlement from the farms
behind it. Every housewife drops her broom, and rushes out to waylay the
huckster, and induce him to sell her the provisions already engaged to
her neighbor. Happy she, if stout enough of arm to convey her booty home
with her; for if she trust the vendor to leave it at her house, even
after paying him his price, she may bid good-bye to the green delights,
as eagerly craved here as on a long sea-voyage.

This "peculiar institution" is all very well, doubtless, for those who
understand it, but is somewhat inconvenient to a stranger, as Miselle
discovered during the three days she was trying to leave Tarr Farm.

On the third morning, after waiting two hours upon the bank of the Creek
for a perjured boatman, Mr. Williams rushed desperately into a crowd of
teamsters and captured the youth whose first impressions of a railway
have been chronicled on a preceding page. Probably even he, had time
been allowed to consider the proposition at length, would have declined
the journey; but, overborne by the veheme