gold-reserve was drawn upon and spent. The beautiful home went to satisfy creditors. In old age the brave, hardy, indefatigable oil-pioneer, who had led the way for others to acquire wealth, was stripped of his possessions. Hope and courage remained. He operated at Warren and revived some of the old wells around the Drake, which afforded him subsistence. Advanced years and anxiety enfeebled the stalwart fame. His steps faltered, and in 1893 protracted sickness closed the busy, eventful life of the man who, more than any other, fostered and developed the petroleum-industry. “I am as a weed Flung from the rock, on ocean’s foam to sail Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.” The Drake well declined almost imperceptibly, yielding twelve barrels a day by the close of the year. It stood idle on Sundays and for a week in December. Smith had a light near a tank of oil, the gas from which caught fire and burned the entire rig. This was the first “oil-fire” in Pennsylvania, but it was destined to have many successors. Possibly it brought back vividly to Colonel Drake the remembrance of his childish dream, in which he and his brother had set a heap of stubble ablaze and could not extinguish the flames. His mother interpreted it: “My son, you have set the world on fire.” The total output of the well in 1859 was under eighteen-hundred barrels. One-third of the oil was sold at sixty-five cents a gallon for shipment to Pittsburg. George M. Mowbray, the accomplished chemist, who came to Titusville in 1860 and played a prominent part in early refining, disposed of a thousand barrels in New York. The well produced moderately for two or three years from the first sand, until shut down by low prices, which made it ruinous to pay the royalty of twelve-and-a-half cents a gallon. A compromise was effected in 1860, by which the Seneca Oil-Company retained a part of the land as fee and surrendered the lease to the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company. Mr. Bissell purchased the stock of the other shareholders in the latter company for fifty-thousand dollars. He drilled ten wells, six of which for months yielded eighty barrels a day, on the tract known thenceforth as the Bissell farm, selling it eventually to the Original Petroleum-Company. The Drake was deepened to five-hundred feet and two others, drilled beneath the roof of the sawmill in 1862, were pumped by water.