it's their clothes, or they get scared and don't look out for themselves. Now there was the Widow McClintock owned that farm above here. She was worth her hundreds of thousands of dollars, but she would put kerosene on her fire to make it burn. So one day it caught, and she caught, and in half an hour there was no such thing as Widow McClintock on Oil Creek. Still all the women keep right on pouring kerosene into their stoves, and every little while one of them goes after the Widow.

"Then there was a woman who sent to the refinery for a pail of alkali to clean her floor. The man thought he'd get benzine instead; and just as he got into the house, the fire from his pipe dropped into it, and the whole shanty was in a blaze before the poor woman knew what had happened. The stupid fool that was to blame got off, but the woman burned up.

"Then there was a woman whose house was afire, and she would rush back, after she had been dragged out, to look for her pet teacups, and she was burned up. And so they go."

Sometimes also the tanks of crude oil take fire, and these conflagrations are said to present a splendid spectacle,—the resinous parts of the oil burning with a fierce deep-red flame and sending up volumes of smoke, through which are emitted lightning-like flashes exploding the ignited gas.

Like some other things, including people, this unappeasable substance conceals its terrors beneath a placid exterior, and lies in its great tanks, or in shallow pits dug for it in the earth, looking neither volcanic nor even combustible, but more like thin green paint than anything else, except when it has become adulterated with water, when it assumes a bilious, yellow appearance, exceedingly uninviting to the spectator. In this case it is allowed to remain undisturbed in the tank until the oil and water have separated, when the latter is drawn off at the bottom.

Wandering one day among groves of derricks and villages of tanks, Miselle and her guide came upon a building containing a pair of truculent monsters in a high state of activity. These were introduced to her as a steam force-pump and its attendant engine; and she was told that they were at that moment sucking up whole tanks of oil from the neighboring wells, and pumping it up the precipitous bluff, through the lonely forest, over marsh and moor, hill and dale, to the great Humboldt Refinery, more than three miles distant, in the town of Plummer, as it is called,—although, in point of fact, Plummer, Tarr Farm, and several other settlements belong to the township of Cornplanter.

There was something about this brace of monsters very fascinating to Miselle. They seemed like subjected genii closed in these dull black cases and this narrow shed, and yet embracing miles of territory in their invisible arms. Even the genius of Aladdin's lamp was not so powerful, for he was obliged to betake himself to the scene of the wonders he was to enact,—and if imprisoned as closely as these, could not have transferred enough oil from Tarr Farm to Plummer to fill his own lamp.

Afterward, in rambling through the woods, Miselle often came upon the mound raised above the buried pipe, and always regarded it with the same admiring awe with which the fisherman of Bagdad probably looked at the copper vessel wherein Solomon had so cunningly "canned" the rebellious Afrit.

Leaving the shed of the monsters, Miselle followed her guide out of the throng of derricks and tanks, and a short distance up the hill, to the picturesque site of Messrs. Barrows and Hazleton's Refinery, the only one now in operation on Tarr Farm.

Entering a low brick building called the still-house, she found herself in a passage between two brick walls, pierced on either hand for five or six oven-doors, while overhead the black roof was divided into panels by a system of iron pipes through which the crude oil was conducted to the caldrons above the iron doors.

The presiding genius of the place was a very fat, dirty, but intelligent Irishman, known as Tommy, who came forward with the politeness of his nation to greet the visitors, and explain to them the mysteries under his charge.

"And give a guess, Ma'am, if ye plase, at what we've got a-burning undher our big pot here," suggested he, with a hand upon one of the oven-doors.

"Soft coal," ventured Miselle, remembering her experience at the glassworks.

"Not a bit of it. It's the binzole intirely. We makes the ile cook itself, an' not a hape of fu'l does it git, but what it brings along itself."

"Seething the kid in its mother's milk," remarked Miselle to herself.

"It's this pipe fetches the binzole from the tank outside, and the mouth of it's widin the door; and this is the stop-cock as lets it on."

So saying, Tommy threw open the oven-door, and pointed to the black end of a pipe just within. At the same time he turned a handle on the outside, and let on a stream of benzine or naphtha, which blazed fiercely up with a lurid flame strongly suggestive of the pictured reward of evil-doers in another life.

Next, Tommy proceeded to explain, after his own fashion, how the oil in the caldrons above, urged by these fires, departed in steam and agony through long pipes called worms, the only outlet from the otherwise air-tight stills, which worms, wriggling out at the end of the building, plunged into a bath of cold water provided for them in a huge square tank fed by a bright mountain-stream winding down from the bluff above in a fashion so picturesque as to be quite out of keeping with its ultimate destination.

Emerging from their cold bath, the worms, crawling along the ground behind the still-house, arrived at the back of another building, called the test-room; and here each one, making a sharp turn to enable him to enter, was pierced at the angle thus formed, and a vertical pipe some ten feet in length inserted.

The object of these pipes was to carry off the gas still mingled with the oil; and, looking attentively, Miselle could distinguish a flickering column ascending from each pipe and forming itself so humanly against the evening sky as to vindicate the superstition of the Saxons, who first named this ether geist.

"What a splendid illumination, if only those ten pipes were lighted some dark night!" suggested Miselle.

"Phe-ew! An' yer lumernation wouldn't stop there long, I can tell yer, Ma'am," retorted Tommy. "The whole works ud be in a swither 'fore iver we'd time to ax what was comin'."

"They would? And why?"

"The binzole, Ma'am, the binzole. It's the Divil's own stuff to manage, an' there's no thrustin' it wid so much as the light uv a pipe nigh hand. The air is full of it; and if you was so much as to sthrike a match here where we stand, it ud be all day wid us 'fore we'd time to think uv it. You should know that yersilf, Sir," continued he, turning to Mr. Williams.

"Yes," returned that gentleman, with a grimace. "I learned the nature of benzine pretty thoroughly when I first came on the Creek. I had been at work over one of the wells, and got my clothes pretty oily, but thought I would not ask my wife to meddle with them. So I sent for a pail of benzine, and, shutting myself up in my shop, set to work to wash my clothes. I succeeded very well for a first attempt; and when I had done, and hung them up to dry, I felt quite proud. Then, as it was pretty cold, I thought I would put a little fire in the stove, and get them dried to carry away before my men came in to work the next morning. So I put some kindling in the stove, and scraped a match on my boot; but I hadn't time to touch it to the shavings before the whole air was aflame, not catching from one point to another, but flashing through the whole place in an instant, and snapping all around my head like a bunch of fire-crackers. I rushed for the door; but before I could get out I was pretty well singed, and there was no