gubernatorial election. The brick-block, the homes of the parents and the sons, the assets of the concern—mere drops in the bucket—met a trifling percentage of the liabilities. Property was sacrificed, suits were entered and dismissed, savings of depositors were swept away and the failure entailed a host of serious losses. The senior Delamater went to Ohio to start life anew at seventy-one. George W. located in Chicago and quickly gathered a law-practice. That he will regain wealth and honor, pay off every creditor and some day represent his district in Congress those who know him best are not unwilling to believe. The fall of the Delamater family—the beggary of the aged father—the crushing of the son’s honorable ambition—the exile from home and friends—the suffering of innocent victims—all these illustrate the sad reverses which, in the oil-region, have “come, not single spies, but in battalions.” James Bonner, son of an Ohio clergyman and book-keeper for Noble & Delamater, lodged in the firm’s new office beside the well. Seized with typhoid fever, his recovery was hopeless. The office caught fire, young Bonner’s father carried him to the window, a board was placed to slide him down and he expired in a few moments. His father, overcome by smoke, was rescued with difficulty; his mother escaped by jumping from the second story. James Foster owned sixty acres on the west side of Oil Creek, opposite the Farrell and Caldwell tracts. The upper half, extending over the hill to Pioneer Run, he sold to the Irwin Petroleum Company of Philadelphia, whose Irwin well pumped two-hundred barrels a day. The Porter well, finished in May of 1864, flowed all summer, gradually declining from two-hundred barrels to seventy and finally pumping twenty. Other wells and a refinery paid good dividends. J. W. Sherman, of Cleveland, leased the lower end of the farm and bounced the “spring-pole” in the winter of 1861-2. His wife’s money and his own played out before the second sand was penetrated. It was impossible to drill deeper “by hand-power.” A horse or an engine must be had to work the tools. “Pete,” a white, angular equine, was procured for one-sixteenth interest in the well. The task becoming too heavy for “Pete,” another sixteenth was traded to William Avery and J. E. Steele for a small engine and boiler. Lack of means to buy coal—an expensive article, sold only for “spot cash”—caused a week’s delay. The owners of the well could not muster “long green” to pay for one ton of fuel! For another sixteenth a purchaser grudgingly surrendered eighty dollars and a shot-gun! The last dollar had been expended when, on March sixteenth, 1862—just in season to celebrate St. Patrick’s day—the tools punctured the third sand. A “crevice” was hit, the tools were drawn out and in five minutes everything swam in oil. The Sherman well was flowing two-thousand barrels a day! Borrowing the phrase of the parrot stripped of his feathers and blown five-hundred