that was worth pumping, and then he found how
it came up with the living springs. He studied
until he knew what it looked like, smelled like,
tasted like, and how to refine it. Now said he
in his letter to his cousin, ``I understand the oil
business.'' His cousin answered, ``All right,
come on.''

So he sold his farm, according to the county
record, for $833 (even money, ``no cents''). He
had scarcely gone from that place before the man
who purchased the spot went out to arrange for
the watering of the cattle. He found the previous
owner had gone out years before and put a plank
across the brook back of the barn, edgewise into
the surface of the water just a few inches. The
purpose of that plank at that sharp angle across
the brook was to throw over to the other bank a
dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle
would not put their noses. But with that plank
there to throw it all over to one side, the cattle
would drink below, and thus that man who had
gone to Canada had been himself damming back
for twenty-three years a flood of coal-oil which the
state geologists of Pennsylvania declared to us
ten years later was even then worth a hundred
millions of dollars to our state, and four years ago
our geologist declared the discovery to be worth
to our state a thousand millions of dollars. The
man who owned that territory on which the city