A great many petroleum companies were organized at one time, which had no existence beyond the paper one that they had in New York and other cities. Some of these companies gave most brilliant promises. I remember one which printed a flaming prospectus, and announced that there was room on its territory for three thousand first-class wells. No one could doubt the truth of this assertion, but its territory happened to be on the top of a mountain, where three hundred thousand wells might have been sunk without finding a drop of oil. The projectors of this concern sold a great deal of stock, but I believe they never declared a dividend of a single dollar, or even took the trouble to sink a well. Their money was made by defrauding their patrons rather than by doing any work in an honest way. Millions of dollars were sunk in oil speculations whose investors never obtained any return whatever. The public heard of the wells that yielded enormously, but they never heard of the thousands of wells that never amounted to anything. So great was the rage for oil speculation during the height of the fever, that a well would be sunk where there was the least chance or prospect of obtaining oil. Suppose a man found a spring of pure water; he might pour a gallon or so of oil on the surface, and then carelessly, and with apparent innocence, lead a stranger to the vicinity. The stranger soon smells the oil, examines the water, and buys the spring at a high price. One day a farmer broke a kerosene lamp in his cellar. A few hours later he admitted a stranger who wanted to buy some potatoes. The stranger discovered the oil, forgot about the potatoes, and immediately opened negotiations for buying the house and the land on which it stood. He paid about three times as much as they were worth, and the farmer went away happy. A man, who thought crude petroleum a good remedy for freckles, one day bathed his face in that article, and lay down to sleep. As he tells the story, he was waked in half an hour by a New York speculator who was trying to sink a shaft into his ear. [Sidenote: THE SPRING THAT FLOWED WHISKEY.]