Aside from the matter in hand, I may say that only a short time before this, I had been denied the chance to go with a Wetmore group on an inspection trip to another oil field in southern Kansas—because I had not as yet signed up, as they had, for an interest in the lease. Well, the energetic young salesman, after securing pledges enough here to put him in the clear, went ahead of the boys to the headquarters and bought the lease, at a discount, on partial payment, using his own money, which, had all gone well, should have netted him more than the promised commission. He intended, of course, to deliver the lease to the group up here at the contract price, or rather the pledged commitments, with only a few amounts yet to be peddled, or held in his own name, at his discretion. But the Wetmore group—the boys who had said that to let me go with them on the inspection trip without first making a commitment, would be unfair to those who had signed up—turned down the deal, cold. Then, after returning home, the group heard rumors of lawsuits—and counter suits. The lease vendor was demanding payment in full, and the poor boy-salesman could not raise the money. Charley Cortner, the salesman earlier mentioned in this writing, had been here for five or six months selling life insurance. He was a whole-souled, persuasive, sort of man who had made many friends here. Cortner and Dr. J. R. Purdum, in whose car the trip to Moline had been made, went out among the people and in almost no time secured pledges for nearly enough money to take over the Shaffer leases. They were selling interests in $125 “units.” But, at the finish, to accommodate all the eager applicants, some subscriptions were taken for as little as $50 and $25—sub-divisions of a unit. When they came to me—at the corn-house, where I had been sorting out seed corn—I surprised them (and maybe shocked them, too) by declining to subscribe. Not that I didn’t want to get in on the big prospect—but because, as I believe, it was an improper if not a dangerous way to form a syndicate. Somewhere I had acquired the notion that if fifty people chipped in and bought a thing that it would take fifty people to sell it. But I didn’t tell them this until after they had “flared up” and had their say. They started to quit me, in disgust—but the Doctor, who was regarded among my best friends, thinking to erase some of the unkind comment, said, “Well, John, when you get through sorting your sour corn, come and see us—we’ll save some units for you.” My corn was not “sour” corn. It was well matured, and making an average of eighty bushels, with some acres on grubbed ground making 125 bushels.