The capital invested in petroleum in this country has increased from one-thousand dollars, raised in 1859 to drill the first well in Pennsylvania, to six-hundred-millions. It is just as easy to say six-hundred-million dollars as six-hundred-million grains of sand, but the possibilities of such a sum of money afford material for endless flights of the imagination. Thirty-thousand miles of pipe-lines handle the output most expeditiously, conveying it to the seaboard at less than teamsters used to receive for hauling it a half-mile. Ten-thousand tank-cars have been engaged in its transportation. Seventy-five bulk-steamers and fleets of sailing-vessels carry refined from Philadelphia and New York to the most distant ports in Europe, Africa and Asia. “Astral Oil” and “Standard White” have penetrated “wherever a wheel can roll or a camel’s foot be planted.” In Pennsylvania, South-eastern Ohio and West Virginia thirty-five-million barrels have been produced and eight-thousand wells drilled in a single year. Add to this the results of operations in North-eastern Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and California, and it must be acknowledged that petroleum is entitled to the chief seat in the synagogue. Edward Bellamy may, perhaps, be imitated profitably and pleasantly in this connection by “Looking-Backward.” Looking forward is the proper kink, Smooth as skating in an icy rink, In one’s planning how to fill a chink At manifold times and places; But for winning in a thoughtful think, Past and present joining with a link Guaranteed to wash and never shrink, Looking backward holds four aces. [Illustration: THE BAD BOY’S IDEA OF ADAM’S FALL.] Precisely how, why, when, where and by whom petroleum was first discovered and utilized nobody living can, and nobody dead will, tell anxious inquirers. The information has “gone where the woodbine twineth,” to join the dodo, the megatherium, the ichthyosaurus and the “lost arts” Wendell Phillips embalmed in fadeless prose. An erratic Joe-Millerite has traced the stuff to the Garden of Eden in a fashion akin to the chopping logic of the Deacon’s “Wonderful One-Horse Shay.” Hear him: “Adam had a fall?” “Sure as death and taxes.” “Why did he fall with such neatness and dispatch?” “Maybe he took a spring to fall.” “Naw! Because everything was greased for the occasion! Unquestionably the only lubricant on this footstool just then was the petroleum brewed in God’s own subterranean stills. Therefore, petroleum figured in Eden, which was to be demonstrated according to Hoyle. See?”