The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York CityMcCabe, James Dabney
History
The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City
McCabe, James Dabney
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- History
Meanwhile speculators, wild with the excitement of this discovery,
besieged Pennsylvania, and that State soon swarmed with them. The
desire to possess a portion of those marvellous lands took possession
of every mind. Throughout the States every one was affected with the
new disease, denominated 'oil on the brain;' and soon the value of the
oleaginous districts went up to wonderful figures. In many instances,
as much as fifty thousand dollars were paid for an acre of land. And,
availing herself of the general infatuation, the Irish widow sold her
farm, for two millions of dollars, to a Boston company, which thought
it was very cheap to give not quite seven thousand dollars per acre for
petroleum land. The three hundred acres of the widow's farm had cost
three hundred dollars a few years before, that is to say, one dollar an
acre! Besides the two millions of dollars, the Irish widow had
stipulated that one half of the flowing well in her garden should
belong to her. That well yielded from five to six hundred barrels of
oil per day. You may be sure the old lady doted on it. She visited it a
hundred times a day, always surveying it with amazement, and
ascertaining whether it was as productive as ever. Even at night she
left her bed to go and view the marvellous spring. During one of these
nocturnal excursions, she imprudently drew too near the well with a
light--the spring fired up with lightning-like rapidity, and the poor
woman, becoming wrapped in the flames, was burned to death. The coroner
was summoned to hold an inquest. When it was over, the widow's
neighbors, desiring to ascertain whether she had sold her farm for as
large an amount as was rumored, prevailed upon the coroner to open her
safe. It contained two hundred thousand dollars in gold, which, no
doubt, represented the widow's profits for her reserved rights in the
well; and also bonds of the United States to the amount of two millions
of dollars, the said bonds registered in the name of Peter Crazy, the
widow's adopted son, and only heir and legatee, according to her will,
that was also found in the strong-box.
Now, the young man, whose large stakes a few minutes ago caused such a
sensation, is the same Peter Crazy, the widow's adopted son; and he
came here to-night to complete his ruin. But I must now relate what
became of him after becoming possessed of a princely fortune.
At the time he came into possession of this fortune, Crazy did not know
the difference between one thousand and one hundred thousand dollars.
He could hardly write his name; and, unfortunately, he had nobody to
warn him against the dangers that beset the youth of this world, and to
make of him, instead of a spendthrift, a man useful to society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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