Many things grow clear to us as the smell grows stronger. While we mildly wonder that a sense so little cultivated in æsthetics can bring so strong a pain, we also perceive the reason for the absence of steamers; for petroleum is a dangerous blessing, fond of fire, and it takes fire to make water do its work--a lazy element, much like the human soul. Is there a perfume called _mille fleurs_? A thousand odors woo our preference as we land among the great ships; but there is a certain agreeableness in some of them, as we get used to the worst and begin to discriminate. We can even understand the workmen growing fond of them, as they tell us that they do; that they are also conducive to long life seems more doubtful. All over the oil-yards are smells; as many in variety as the colors of aniline dye, from the first rather pleasant smell, like a cellar full of cider, barrels of cider with the bung-holes open, to the more fetid varieties. Many places have the sickening, capitive odor of ether, from the volatile surface-naphtha; this, being dangerous, has a peculiar fascination of its own. For naphtha is light, volatile, inflammable, impulsive, the aristocrat of oils; and its odor intoxicates. But come--we must not dally with this naphtha, this _crême de la crême_ of the upper crust--come to the receiving-tanks upon the hill. There is a lesson in the making of oil, as in most things. I make no doubt Mr. Tyndall would find the process quite of a piece with the evolution of the soul. Here you see the crude oil as it came from its native earth, in the pipe-lines from the wells; it looks like greenish molasses, and smells of the devil. Natural depravity, we must suppose. But see it in the tail-house; or, rather, let us first look at the stills, those broad, black towers, under which the fire rages, like those in the city of Dis. Here is the burning and the broiling that throws off the grosser atoms from the pure oil of light; first, alas! first of all, our pleasant naphtha, our cream of oils; a short hour or two is enough for that, and it is gone. Here you see it, through the glass cover to the iron trough in the tail-house, the first “run” of all. What a strange liquid, as it breaks and dances in its flow--light, shining, mobile, broken into sharp facets and flashes like cut glass; a spirit, not an oil. Flossie Starbuck used to fancy this was the water of the streams of hell. A great poet had had the same idea before, which is surely to the credit of Flossie’s imagination; for she knew nothing of great poets, as a child.