A maiden of uncertain age owned a farm which various operators vainly tried to lease. Hoping to steal a march on the others, one smooth talker called the second time. “I have come, Miss Blank,” he began, “to make you an offer.” He didn’t get a chance to add “for your land.” The old girl, not a gosling who would let a prize slip, jumped from her chair, clasped him about the neck and exclaimed: “Oh! Mr. Blank, this is so sudden, but I’m yours!” The astounded oilman shook her off at last and explained that he already had a wife and five children and wanted the Farm only. The clinging vine wept and stormed, threatened a breach-of-promise suit and loaded her dead father’s blunderbuss to be prepared for the next intruder. W. J. Bostford, who died at Jamestown in November of 1895, operated at Pithole in its palmy days. Business was done on a cash basis and oil-property was paid for in money up to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars. Bostford made a big sale and started from Pithole to deposit his money. A cross-country trip was necessary to reach Titusville. Shortly after leaving Pithole he was attacked by robbers, who took all the money and left him for dead upon the highway. He was picked up alive, with a broken head and many other injuries, which he survived thirty years. [Illustration: THE DINNER HOUR AT WIGGINS’S HOTEL.] The first “hotel” at Pithole—a balloon-frame rushed up in a day—bore the pretentious title of Astor House. Before its erection pilgrims to the coming city took their chance of meals at the Holmden farm-house. As a guest wittily remarked: “It was table d’hote for men and also table d’oat for horses.” The viands were all heaped upon large dishes and everybody helped himself. The Morey-Farm Hotel, just above Pithole, charged twenty-one dollars a week for board, had gas-light, steam-heat, telegraph-office, barber-shop, colored waiters and “spring-mattresses.” Its cooking rivalled the best in the large cities. At Wiggins’s Hotel, a three-story boarding-house in the Tidioute field, two-hundred men would often wait their turn to get dinner. This was a common experience in the frontier towns, to which big throngs hurried before houses could be erected for their accommodation. E. H. Crittenden’s hotel at Titusville was the finest Oildom boasted in the sixties. Book & Frisbee’s was notable at the height of the Parker development. A dollar for a meal or a bed, four dollars a day or twenty-eight dollars a week, be the stay long or short, was the invariable rate. Peter Christie’s Central Hotel, at Petrolia, was immensely popular and a regular gold-mine for the owner. Oil City’s Petroleum House was a model hostelry, under “Charley” Staats and “Jim” White. The Jones House cleared Jones forty-thousand dollars in nine months. Its first guest was a Mr. Seymour, who spent one year collecting data for a statistical work on petroleum. His manuscripts perished in the flood of 1865. The last glimpse my eyes