Such were the men who heard the reports concerning Kentucky. They did not squirm and hesitate and wonder where they were at. Thirty-five minutes after entering the room the “Boston Oil Company” was organized, the capital was paid in, officers were elected, a lawyer had started to get the charter and authority was given me to draw at sight for whatever cash was needed up to one-hundred-thousand dollars! This record-breaking achievement was about as expeditious as the Chicago grocer, who closed his store one forenoon and pasted on the door a placard inscribed in bold characters: “At my wife’s funeral—back in twenty minutes!” Oliver Ames, the future governor, invited the party to lunch at the Parker House, Boston’s noted hostelry. An hour sped quickly. My return-trip had been arranged by way of Buffalo and the Lake-Shore Road to Franklin. The time to start arrived, the sleigh to take me to the depot was at the door, the good-byes were said, the driver tucked in the robes and grasped the lines. At that instant Oliver Ames, Sen., called: “Please come into the hotel one moment; I want to jot down something you told us about the American Well.” The other gentlemen looked on, the explanation was penciled rapidly, my seat in the sleigh was resumed and Mr. Dexter jokingly said to the Jehu: “You’ll have to hustle, or your fare will miss his train!” Through the narrow, twisted, crowded streets the horses trotted briskly. Rushing into the station, the train was pulling out and the ticket-examiner was shutting the iron-gates. He refused to let me attempt to catch the rear car and my disappointment was extreme. A train for New York and Pittsburg left in fifteen minutes. It bore me, an unwilling passenger, safely and satisfactorily to the “Smoky City.” There the news reached me of the frightful railway-disaster at Ashtabula, in which P. P. Bliss and fourscore fellow-mortals, filled with fond anticipations of New-Year reunions, perished in the icy waters ninety feet beneath the treacherous bridge that dropped them into the yawning chasm! The doomed train was the same that would have borne me to Ashtabula and—to death, had not Mr. Ames detained me to make the entry in his memorandum-book! Call it Providence, Luck, Chance, what you will, an incident of this stamp is apt to beget “a heap of tall thinking.” “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.” [Illustration: GIRL CLIMBING A DERRICK.]