Entering into partnership with a Wall-street broker, he wrecked his small fortune speculating in oil-stocks, his health broke down and he removed to Vermont. Physicians ordered him to the seaside as the only remedy for his disease, neuralgic affection of the spine, which threatened paralysis of the limbs and caused intense suffering. Near Long Branch, in a cottage offered by a friend, Mr. and Mrs. Drake drank the bitter cup to the dregs. Their funds were exhausted, the patient needed constant attention and helpless children cried for bread. The devoted wife and mother attempted to earn a pittance with her needle, but could not keep the wolf of hunger from the door. Medicine for the sick man was out of the question. All this time men in the region the Drake well had opened to the world were piling up millions of dollars! One day in 1869, with eighty cents to pay his fare, Colonel Drake struggled into New York to seek a place for his twelve-year-old boy. The errand was fruitless. The distressed father was walking painfully on the street to the railway-station, to board the train for home, when he met “Zeb” Martin of Titusville, afterwards proprietor of the Hotel Brunswick. Mr. Martin noted his forlorn condition, inquired as to his circumstances, learned the sad story of actual privation, procured dinner, gave the poor fellow twenty dollars and cheered him with the assurance that he would raise a fund for his relief. The promise was redeemed. At a meeting in Titusville the case was stated and forty-two hundred dollars were subscribed. The money was forwarded to Mrs. Drake, who husbanded it carefully. The terrible recital aroused such a feeling that the Legislature, in 1873, granted Colonel Drake an annuity of fifteen-hundred dollars during his life and his heroic wife’s. California had set a good example by giving Colonel Sutter, the discoverer of gold in the mill-race, thirty-five-hundred dollars a year. The late Thaddeus Stevens, “the Great Commoner,” hearing that Drake was actually in want, prepared a bill, found among his papers after his death, intending to present it before Congress for an appropriation of two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars for Colonel Drake. In 1870 the family removed to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Years of suffering, borne with sublime resignation, closed on the evening of November ninth, 1881, with the release of Edwin L. Drake from this vale of tears. A faithful wife and four children survived the petroleum-pioneer. They lived at Bethlehem until the spring of 1895 and then moved to New England. Colonel Drake was a man of pronounced individuality, affable, genial and kindly. He had few superiors as a story-teller, neither caroused nor swore, and was of unblemished character. He wore a full beard, dressed well, liked a good horse, looked every man straight in the face and his dark eyes sparkled when he talked. Gladly he laid down the heavy burden of a checkered life, with its afflictions and vicissitudes, for the