The Pithole bubble was blown at an opportune moment to catch suckers. Hundreds of oil-companies had come into existence in 1864, hungry for territory and grasping at anything within rifle-shot of an actual or prospective “spouter.” The speculative tide flowed and ebbed as never before in any age or nation. Volumes could be written of amazing transitions of fortune. Scores landed at Pithole penniless and departed in a few months “well heeled.” Others came with “hatfuls of money” and went away empty-handed. Thousands of stockholders were bitten as badly as the sailor, whom the shark nipped off by the waist-band. It was rather refreshing in its way for “country Reubens” to do up Wall-street sharpers at their own game. Shrewd Bostonians, New-Yorkers and Philadelphians, magnates in business and finance, were snared as readily as hayseeds who buy green-goods and gold-bricks. There are no flies on the smooth, glib Oily Gammon whose mouth yielded more lubricating oil than the biggest well on French Creek. His favorite prey was a pilgrim with a bursting wallet or the agent of an eastern petroleum-company. A well pouring forth three, six, eight, ten, twelve or fifteen-hundred barrels of five-dollar crude every twenty-four hours was a spectacle to fire the blood and turn the brain of the most sluggish beholder. “Such a well,” he might calculate, “would make me a millionaire in one year and a Crœsus in ten.” The wariest trout would nibble at bait so tempting. The schemer with property to sell had “the very thing he wanted” and would “let him in on the ground-floor.” He met men who, driving mules or jigging tools six months ago, were “oil-princes” now. Here lay a tract, “the softest snap on top of the earth,” only a mile from the Great Geyser, with a well “just in the sand and a splendid show.” He could have it at a bargain-counter sacrifice—one-hundred-thousand dollars and half the oil. The engine had given out and the owner was about to order a new one when called home by the sudden death of his mother-in-law. Settling the old lady’s estate required his entire attention, therefore he would consent to sell his oil-interests “dirt-cheap” to a responsible buyer who would push developments. The price ought to be two or three times the sum asked, but the royalty from the big wells sure to be struck would ultimately even up matters. The tale was plausible and the visitor would “look at the property.” He saw real sand on the derrick-floor and everything besmeared with grease. The presence of oil was unmistakable. Drilling ten feet into the rich rock would certainly tap the jugular and—glorious thought!—perhaps outdo the Great Geyser itself. He closed the deal, telegraphed for an engine—he was dying to see that stream of oil climbing skywards—and chuckled gleefully. The keen edge of his delight might have been dulled had he known that the well was _through_, not merely _to_, the sand and absolutely guiltless