d high fees. One of my new friends avowed his intention
of at once employing this oil-seer as over-seer.

We came to some stupendous tanks and to a well which, as one of my
friends said enviously and longingly, was running three thousand dollars
a day in clear greenbacks. Its history was remarkable. For a very long
time an engineer had been here, employed by a company in boring, but bore
he never so wisely, he could get nothing. At last the company, tired of
the expenditure and no returns, wrote to him ordering him to cease all
further work on the next Saturday. But the engineer had become
"possessed" with the idea that he _must_ succeed, and so, unheeding
orders, he bored away all alone the next day. About sunset some one
going by heard a loud screaming and hurrahing. Hastening up, he found
the engineer almost delirious with joy, dancing like a lunatic round a
fountain of oil, which was "as thick as a flour-barrel, and rising to the
height of a hundred feet." It was speedily plugged and made available.
All of this occurred only a very few days before I saw it.

That night I stopped at a newly-erected tavern, and, as no bed was to be
had, made up my mind to sleep in my blanket on the muddy floor,
surrounded by a crowd of noisy speculators, waggoners, and the like. I
tell this tale vilely, for I omitted to say that I did the same thing the
first night when I entered the oil-country, got a bed on the second, and
that this was the third. But even here I made the acquaintance of a nice
Scotchman, who found out another very nice man who had a house near by,
and who, albeit not accustomed to receive guests, said he would give us
two one bed, which he did. However, the covering was not abundant, and
I, for all my blanket, was a-cold. In the morning I found a full supply
of blankets hanging over the foot-board, but we had retired without a
light, and had not noticed them. Our breakfast being rather poor, our
host, with an apology, brought in a great cold mince-pie three inches
thick, which is just the thing which I love best of all earthly food.
That he apologised for it indicated a very high degree of culture indeed
in rural America, and, in fact, I found that he was a well-read and
modest man.

It was, I think, at a place called Plummer that I made the acquaintance
of two brothers named B---, who seemed to vibrate on the summit of
fortune as two golden balls might on the top of the oil-fountain to which
I refer