whatever other weapons Nature or chance had provided them. This scene of anarchy lasted several days, and some cold-blooded photographer amused himself, "after" Nero, in taking views of it from different points. Copies of these pictures, commemorating such destruction of property, temper, and propriety as Oil Creek never witnessed before, are hung about the "office" of the Refinery, with which comfortable apartment the visitors finished their tour.

Here they were offered the compliments of the season and locality in a collation of chestnuts; and here also they were invited to inspect a stereoscope, which, with its accompanying views, is considered on Tarr Farm as admirable a wonder as was, doubtless, Columbus's watch by the aborigines of the New World. Dearer to Miselle than chestnuts or stereoscope, however, were the information and the anecdotes placed at her service by the gentlemen of the establishment, albeit involuntarily; and with her friends she shortly after departed from Barrows and Hazleton's Refinery, filled with content and gratitude.

The noticeable point in the society of Tarr Farm, or rather in the human scenery, for society there is none, is the absurd mingling of inharmonious material. As in the toy called Prince Rupert's Drop, a multitude of unassimilated particles are bound together by a master necessity. Remove the necessity, and in the flash of an eye the particles scatter never to reunite.

In her two days' tour of Tarr Farm, Miselle talked with gentlemen of birth and education, gentlemen whose manners contrasted oddly enough with their coarse clothes and knee-high boots; also with intermittent gentlemen, who felt Tarr Farm to be no fit theatre for the exercise of their acquired politeness; also with men like Tommy and Jimmy, whose claims lay not so much in aristocratic connection and gentle breeding as in a thorough appreciation of the matter in hand; also with a less pleasing variety of mankind, men who, originally ignorant and debased, have through lucky speculations acquired immense wealth without the habits of body and mind fitly accompanying it.

Various ludicrous anecdotes are told of this last class, but none droller than that of the millionnaire, who, after the growth of his fortune, sent his daughter, already arrived at woman's estate, to school, that she might learn reading, writing, and other accomplishments. After a reasonable time the father visited the school, and inquired concerning his daughter's progress. This he was informed was but small, owing to a "want of capacity."

"Capacity! capacity!" echoed the father, thrusting his hands into his well-lined pockets; "well, by ginger, if the gal's got no capacity, I've got the money to buy her one, cost what it may!"

Another young fellow, originally employed in a very humble position by one of the oil companies, suddenly acquired a fortune, and removed to another part of the country. Returning for a visit to the scene of his former labors, he stood inspecting the operations of a cooper at work upon an oil-barrel. The two men had formerly been comrades, but this fact the rich man now found it convenient to forget, and the poor one was too proud to remember.

"Pray, Cooper," inquired the former at last, tapping the barrel superciliously with his cane, "are you able to make this thing oil-tight?"

"I believe so," retorted Cooper, dryly. "Was you ever troubled by their leaking, when you rolled them through the mud from the well to the Creek?"

Through all this fungus growth it is rather difficult to come at the indigenous product of the soil; and Miselle found none of whose purity she could be sure, except the youth who drove her from Tarr Farm to Schaeffer's on her return. Arriving in sight of the railway, this puer ingenuus, pointing to the track, inquired,—

"An' be thot what the keers rides on?"

"Yes," said Mr. Williams, "that's the track."

"An' yon's the wagons whar ye'll set?" pursued he, pointing to some platform-cars, waiting to be loaded with oil-barrels.

"Hardly. Those are where the oil sits."

"Be? Then yon's for the fowks, I reckon?" indicating a line of box freight-cars a little farther on.

"No, not exactly. Those are the passenger-cars, away up the track, with windows and steps."

"An' who rides in the loft up atop?" inquired the youth, after a prolonged stare.

This question, referring to the raised portion of the roof, universal in Western cars, being answered, Mr. Williams inquired in his turn,—

"Did you never see the railway before?"

"Never seed 'em till this minute. Fact, I never went furder from home than Tarr Farm 'fore to-day. 'Spect there's a many won'erful sights 'twixt here an' Eri', ben't there?"

Imagine a full-grown lad, in these United States, whose ideas are bounded by the city of Erie!

Not indigenous to the soil, but a firmly rooted, exotic growth, was the sonsy Scotch family whom Miselle was taken to see, the Sunday after her arrival.

Two years ago their picturesque log-cabin stood almost in a wilderness, with the farm-house of James Tarr its only neighbor. Now the derricks are crowding up the hill toward it, until only a narrow belt of woodland protects it from invasion. In front, a small flower-garden still showed some autumn blooms at the time of Miselle's visit, and was the only attempt at floriculture seen by her on Oil Creek.

With traditional Scotch hospitality, the mistress of the house, seconded by Maggie and Belle, the elder daughters, insisted that the proposed call should include dinner; and Miselle, nothing loath, was glad that her friends allowed themselves to be prevailed upon to stay.

"It's no that we hae onything fit to gie ye, but ye maun just tak' the wull for the deed," said the good mother, as she bustled about, and set before her guests a plain and plentiful meal, where all was good enough, and the fresh bread and newly churned butter something more.

"It's Maggie's baith baker and dairy-woman," said the well-pleased dame, in answer to a compliment upon these viands. "And it's she'll be gay and proud to gie ye all her ways about it, gif ye'll ask her."

So Maggie, being questioned, described the process of making "salt-rising" bread, and to the recipe added a friendly caution, that, if allowed to ferment too long, the dough would become "as sad and dour as a stane, and though you br'ak your heart over it, wad ne'er be itsel' again."

From a regard either to etiquette or convenience, only the heads of the family, and Jamie, the eldest son, a fine young giant, of one-and-twenty, sat down with the guests: the girls and younger children waiting upon table, and sitting down afterward with another visitor, an intelligent negro farmer, one of the most pleasing persons Miselle encountered on her travels.

Dinner over, it was proposed that Maggie and Belle should accompany Mr. and Mrs. Williams and Miselle on a visit to some coal-mines about a mile farther back in the forest, and, with the addition of a young man named John, who chanced in on a Sunday-evening call to one of the young ladies, the party set forth.

The day was the sweetest of the Indian summer, and the walk through woods of chestnut and hemlock was as charming as possible, and none the less so for the rustic coquetries of pretty Belle Miller, whose golden hair was the precise shade of a lock once shown to Miselle as a veritable relic of Prince Charlie.

The forest road ended abruptly in a wide glade, where stood the shanty occupied by the miners, a shed for the donkeys employed in dragging out the coal, and, finally, the ruinous tunnel leading horizontally into a disused mine. The wooden tram-way on which the coal-car had formerly run still remained; and cautiously walking upon this causeway through the quagmire of mud, Miselle and Mr. Williams penetrated some distance into the mine, but saw nothing more wonderful