It also chanced that this whole country abounded in signs of petroleum. It was found floating on springs. The company possessed rights of royalty on thousands of acres on Elk River, which was as yet in the debatable land, harassed by rebels. These claims, however, were "run out," and needed to be renewed by signatures from the residents. They were in the hands of David Goshorn, who kept the only "tavern" or hotel in Charleston, and he asked $5,000 for his rights. There was another party in the field after them. I verily believe that David Goshorn sold the right to me because he played the fiddle and I the guitar, and because he did not like the rival, who was a Yankee, while I was a congenial companion. Many a journey had we together, and as I appreciated him as a marked character of odd oppositions, we got on admirably. In Cannelton I went down into a coal mine and risked my life strangely in ascending a railway. The hill is 1,500 feet in height, and on its face is a railway which ascends at an angle of 15 degrees, perhaps the steepest in America. I ascended in it, and soon observed that of the two strands of the iron cable which drew it one was broken. The very next week the other broke, and two men were killed by an awful death, they and the car falling a thousand feet to the rocks below. The next week we returned to Cincinnati, and thence to Philadelphia. On my way from New York to Providence I became acquainted in the train with a modest, gentlemanly man, who told me he was a great-grandson or descendant of Thomson who wrote the "Seasons." I thought him both great and grand in an incident which soon occurred. A burly, bull-necked fellow in the car was attacked with an epileptic fit. He roared, kicked, screamed like a wildcat; and among fifty men in the vehicle, I venture to say that only Thomson and I, in a lesser degree, showed any plain common sense. I darted at the epileptic, grappled with him, held him down by what might be called brutal kindness, for I held his head down, while I sat on his arm and throttled him _sans merci_--I avow it--and tore off in haste his neckcloth (his neck was frightfully swelled), while Thomson brought cold water from the "cooler," with which we bathed his face freely, and chafed his pulse and forehead. Little by little he recovered. The other passengers, as usual, did nothing, and a little old naval officer, who had been fifty years in service (as Thomson told me), simply kicked and screamed convulsively, "Take him away! take him away!" The epileptic was George Christy, the original founder of the Christy Minstrels. I can never think of this scene without exclaiming, "_Vive_ Thomson!" for he was the only man among us who displayed quiet self-possession and _savoir faire_. As for me, my "old Injun" was up, and I had "sailed in" for a fight by mere impulse. _Vive_ Thomson! _Bon sang ne peut mentir_.