ndly and like a lady." In rural America such girls are really lady-
helps, and not "servants," albeit those who know how to get on with them
find them the very best servants in the world; but they must be treated
as _friends_.

I went up Elk River several times on horse or in canoe to renew leases or
to lease new land, &c. The company sent on a very clever and intelligent
rather young man named Sandford, who had been a railroad superintendent,
to help me. I liked him very much. We had a third, a young Virginian,
named Finnal. At or near Cannelton I selected a spot where we put up a
steam-engine, and began to bore for oil. It was very near the famous gas-
well which once belonged to General Washington. This well gave forth
every week the equivalent of _one hundred and fifty_ tons of coal. It
was utilised in a factory. After I sunk our shaft it gave out; but I do
not believe that we stopped it, for no gas came into our well. Finnal
was the superintendent of the well. One day he nearly sat down--_nudo
podice_--on an immense rattlesnake. He had a little cottage and a fine
horse. He kept the latter in a stable and painted the door _white_, so
that when waking in the night he could see if any horse-thief had opened
it. Many efforts were made to rob him of it.

At this time Lee's army was disbanded, and fully one-half came straggling
in squads up the valley to Charleston to be paroled. David Goshorn's
hotel was simply crammed with Confederate officers, who slept anywhere.
With these I easily became friends; they seemed like Princeton Southern
college mates. Now I have to narrate a strange story. One evening when
I was sitting and smoking on the portico with some of these _bons
compagnons_ I said to one--

"People say that your men never once during the war got within sight of
Harrisburg or of a Northern city. But I believe they did. One day when
I was on guard I saw five men scout on the bank in full sight of it. But
nobody agreed with me."

The officer laughed silently, and cried aloud to a friend with a broken
arm in a sling, who lay within a room on a bed, "Come out here, L---.
Here is something which will interest you more than anything you ever
heard before."

He came out, and, having heard my story, said--

"Nobody ever believed your story, nor did anybody ever believe mine. Mine
is this--that when we were at Sporting Hill a corporal of mine came in
and declared that he and his men had scouted