A number of producers agreeing to stand sponsors for the bills, McMullen & Bradshaw floated the Daily News in 1886. Its backers grew tired of emptying their pockets and the bright venture gave up the ghost. Eben Brewer’s Evening Star tinted the sky under its founder’s artistic touch. He sold to Andrew Carr, who found the load unbearable and shoved it upon Rufus B. Stone, brother of Congressman Charles W. Stone. Mr. Stone, an able lawyer, was Chancellor of Mississippi in the reconstruction-days. The reconstructed legislature lopped off his salary and he located at Bradford to practice law. He owned the Star several years, writing most of the political editorials that carried weight and gave the paper high standing. H. F. Barber, a man of fine intellect and noble purpose, dropped the Smethport Miner, relieved Stone and honed the Star a few years, assisted at times by George Allen’s clever stroke. Protracted sickness, during which he showed “how sublime it is to suffer and be strong,” at last “withered the garlands on his brow.” He is dead, but “his speaking dust has more of life than half its breathing moulds.” Allen slid to Buffalo to polish up a railroad-periodical. “Judge” Johnson—in 1875 he landed at Bradford, served a term in the Legislature and another as postmaster, operated in oil and died three years ago—controlled the Star after Barber, whose widow still retains an interest in the paper. Ex-Senator Emery fitted out the Daily Record, which seeks to trail the standard of the Standard in the dust and ticket independent producers, refiners and pipe-liners to a petroleum-Utopia. “Ed.” Jones, the adept who toed the chalk-mark on the Harrisburg Call, whirled the emery-wheel so expertly that the Record has never approached Davy Jones’s locker. It is snappy and full of fight as a shillaleh at Donnybrook Fair. Carr’s Sunday-Mail, freighted with a car of delicate morsels, barked up the wrong tree and went to the bow-wows. Carr rolled down to Pittsburg to sell buggies, bagging a cargo of ducats. “Tom” L. Wilson—he’s as humorous as they make ’em—got out three numbers of Sunday Morning, a four-page blanket in size and a ten-course banquet in contents. Col. Ege shut it down for publishing a rank extract from Walt Whitman’s “Blades o’ Grass” and boomed the Evening-Times, which expired in infancy. Ege was a banker who hankered to be State-Treasurer, banked upon newspaper-support, went into bankruptcy, received an appointment in the Philadelphia Mint and traveled westward when Cleveland shuffled the pack for a new deal. Wilson wrote for the oil-region press, handled the Reading branch of a Harrisburg paper, edited the Washington Review—Sistersville has a sisterly Review now—and rounded up in Buffalo. The Post, Bradford’s latest Sunday experiment, owes its good looks and good matter to Edward F. McIntyre and George O. Sloan.

One evening in 1877 a young stranger walked into the St. Petersburg post-office, bought a package of stationery at the book-counter and told J. M. Place he was looking for a situation. Place hired him as a clerk. He had come from the homestead farm in Orange county, N. Y., to Cornell University, worked his way and graduated in civil-engineering. Marshall Swartzwelder lectured at St. Petersburg on temperance and Place’s clerk sat up all night to report the masterpiece for the Derrick. It was his first production in print, a voluntary act on his part, and the article attracted most favorable notice. Its author was at once offered a position on the Derrick. He came in contact with oil-statistics and his real genius asserted itself. His painstaking, conscientious reports were accepted as strictly reliable. He would trudge over the hills, wade through miles of mud and ford swollen streams to ascertain the precise status of an important well, rather than approximate it from hearsay. This care and thoroughness gave the highest value to the statistical work of Justus C. McMullen. In 1879 he went to Bradford and worked on the Breeze, the Era and the Star, always with the same devotion that was a ruling maxim of his life. In 1883 he scouted in Warren and Forest counties and became part owner of the Petroleum Age. Alfred L. Snell and Major W. C. Armor were associated with him in this admirable monthly, of which he became sole proprietor on the first of December, 1887. A. C. Crum, now on the editorial staff of the Pittsburg Dispatch, contributed many a newsy crumb to the Age. A newsboy at Pickwick hailed me in front of his stand one cool morning and asked—not in a Pickwickian sense—if it would be worth while to get somebody to send locals to the Derrick. “Why not do it yourself?” was my answer. He tried and he succeeded. His work expanded and improved and he adopted journalism permanently. He catered for Oil City and Bradford papers, spun yarns for Pittsburg dailies and was a legislative correspondent several sessions. Snell, a statistical hummer and hard-to-beat purveyor of news, hangs his manuscript on the Derrick hook. Armor sponsored a historic book and laid off his armor to second Dr. Egle in the State Library. He has a book-store in Harrisburg and a museum that distances the “Old Curiosity Shop.” McMullen established and edited the Daily Oil-News in 1886. He died of pleurisy, contracted from exposure in collecting oil-data, on January thirty-first, 1888, cut off at thirty-seven. The Petroleum Age did not stay long behind its unswerving projector. Justus C. McMullen is enshrined in the affections of the people. An unrelenting foe of oppression, he had a warm heart for the poor and pursued his own path of right through thorns or flowers. He married Miss Cora, daughter of Col. L. M. Morton, who lives in Bradford and has one little girl. A brave, grand, exalted spirit passed from earth when J. C. McMullen’s light was quenched.

Parker has been called “the graveyard of newspapers,” yet G. A. Needle has run his popular Phœnix twenty-three years, accumulating sufficient wealth to own a book-store and oil-wells and let the paper canter along under charge of his son, the youngest editor in Pennsylvania.

The Washington Reporter, established in 1892 as a daily and semi-weekly, owes its abundant success largely to the wide-awake editor, William Christman. His practical knowledge and ready pen keeps the Reporter right in the swim. Fulton Phillips in 1888 launched the Outlook at McDonald, then merely a flag-station on the Panhandle Railway, with no great outlook in prospect. His editorials are essentially independent and vigorous, the man dominating the paper. It is Fulton Phillips, rather than the paper, who is read and quoted by the thousands of Outlook readers. He was born within a mile of McDonald and the boom following oil-operations did not catch the tall editor—he is considerably above six feet—napping. The Outlook was the first to put a reporter in the field and write up the wells in picturesque style. Phillips served through the war, taught school at Pittsburg, ran a paper at Canonsburg, drifted westward, did editorial work in Missouri and California and returned to start the only failure in his pilgrimage, a temperance-organ at Washington. It went the way of former temperance-sheets in the local-option town where they take theirs in jugs. In other portions of the oil-world journalism holds up its end creditably, newspapers and developments marching neck and neck on their grand errand of enlightenment. The Sistersville Review and Parkersburg Sentinel do the West-Virginia field proud, the Toledo Journal is always primed with Ohio oil-news, nor is there a spot in which oil plays trump that literature does not hold a royal flush. Intelligence and petroleum are a good pair to tie to, to bet on and to rake in the jack-pot.

The Rev. S. J. M. Eaton—his name is ever spoken with reverence—thirty-three years pastor of the Presbyterian church at Franklin, filled a large place in the literary guild. He loved especially to delve into old books and papers and letters pertaining to the pioneers of Northwestern Pennsylvania. His faithful labors in this neglected nook unearthed a troop of traditions and facts which “the world will not willingly let die.” For the “History of Venango County” he furnished a number of leading chapters. His published works include “Petroleum,” an epitome of oil-affairs down to 1866, “Lakeside,” a tale based upon his father’s ministerial experiences in the wilds of Erie county, biographies of eminent divines, sketches of the Erie Presbytery, pamphlets and sermons. “The Holy City” and “Palestine,” embodying his observations in the orient, were issued as text-books by the Chautauqua Circle. Dr. Eaton was my near neighbor for years and hours in his well-stocked library, enriched by his “affluence of discursive talk,” are recalled with deep satisfaction. On the sixteenth of July, 1889, while walking along the street, he raised his hands suddenly and fell to the pavement, struck down by heart-failure. “He was not, for God took him” to wear the victor’s crown. Farewell, “until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.”

In the Franklin office of the Galena Oil-Works are three successful weavers of rich textures in the literary loom—Dr. Frank H. Johnston, E. H. Sibley and Samuel H. Gray. Dr. Johnston was born in Canal township, reared on a farm, severely wounded in battling for the Union, studied medicine, practiced at Cochranton and in 1872 located at Petrolia. There “he first essayed to write” for the Oil-City Derrick. From the very outset his articles were up to concert-pitch. Abandoning medicine for letters, he acquired a thorough knowledge of stenography, read the choicest books and wrote in his best vein for the press. He represented the Derrick as its Franklin correspondent with credit to himself and the paper. For sixteen years he has been connected with the Galena Oil-Works as secretary of Hon. Charles Miller, a place demanding the superior qualifications with which the doctor is unstintingly endowed.

Edwin Henry Sibley, born at Bath, N. Y., in 1857, is a brother of Hon. Joseph C. Sibley and has resided in Franklin twenty-three years. He was graduated from Cornell University in 1880. For several years he has been treasurer of the Galena Oil-Works and manager of Miller & Sibley’s famous Prospect-Hill Stock-Farm, positions of responsibility to which his personal address, his training and his business-methods adapt him pre-eminently. Three years in succession he has been unanimously elected President of the Pennsylvania Jersey-Cattle Club. He has been active and efficient in promoting the laudable work of the University Extension Society. Under guise of “Polybius Crusoe Smith, Sage of Cranberry Cross-Roads”—the Smiths are big folks since the by-play of Pocahontas—he contributes to Puck and other well-known publications humorous articles and short, quaint, pithy sayings. These display a keen insight into human nature and rare gift of happy, accurate expression. One of his recent effusions—an address welcoming the delegates to an agricultural convention—is a bit of burlesque that deserves to rank with Artemus Ward’s brightest efforts or the richest paragraphs in the Biglow Papers. A few buds plucked at random from the flowery mead will serve to illustrate the high-class stamp of Mr. Sibley’s work in the field his genius adorns. They are literary nosegays from his terse observations as a philosophic “looker-on in Vienna:”

“The wife that manages her husband is a genius, the one that bosses him is a tartar, the one that fights him is a fool, while the one that does none of them is now as much out of fashion as her grandmother’s wedding-gown.”

“The pygmies of Africa are such by nature, but elsewhere they are produced artificially by a diet of petty and envious thoughts.”

“‘Truth is mighty and will prevail,’ but Error generally has the better of it till the seventy-seventh round.”

“One of the greatest evils that humanity has to contend with is that so many icebergs have floated down from the North Pole and persist in passing themselves off for men.”

“Former lovers in making out their title-deeds of the heart to their successors always reserve at least a narrow pathway across a corner.”

“Wise men and fools have foolish thoughts; fools tell them, wise men keep them to themselves.”

“Parents that haven’t time to correct their children when they are small have time to weep over them when they are grown.”

“Affectation (alias of Deceitfulness) has three picked cronies from whom she is seldom separated. Their names are False Pride, Weakmindedness and Bad Temper.”

“If one has too much vitality in his brains he can get rid of it by taking them out and boiling them. If he finds this too much bother, he can accomplish the same result by swallowing a few doses of a decoction of faith-cure, spook-lore and hypnotismhypnotism.”

“For peace of mind and length of days, put this inscription above the doorway of workshop and home: Troubles that will not be worth worrying over seven years hence are not worth worrying over now.”

“The ancient Israelites once worshiped a golden calf, but the modern Americans would worship a golden polecat if they couldn’t get the gold in any other form to worship.”

“The young man who starts out in life with character and brains and energy as his outfit will distance the one whose sole capital is the money his father left him.”

Samuel H. Gray carries under his hat plenty of the gray-matter that makes bright writers and bright wooers of the Muses. He has been court stenographer of Venango county and holds a confidential position with the firm of Miller & Sibley, applying his spare moments to newspaper-writing. His pictures of petroleum-traits and incidents are finished word-paintings, with “light and shade and color properly disposed.” Like Silas Wegg, he “drops into poetry” in a friendly way. Such papers as the New-York Truth strive for his emanations, which savor of Bret Harte and “hold the mirror up to nature” in oleaginous circles. Judge of this “By the Order of the Lord,” founded on an actual occurrence in Scrubgrass township:

The late Rev. Harry L. Yewens, rector of St. John’s church, was an accomplished writer and contributed many timely articles to the press. Rev. Dr. Fradenburg, formerly of Oil City and Franklin, has published seven scholarly volumes on religious subjects of vital interest.

The Bolivar Breeze, seven years old, under the able management of J. P. Herrick is one of the most readable sheets published in any section of the country. Editor Herrick is a philosopher and wit, who looks on the bright side of life and, better still, helps others to do likewise.

P. A. Rattigan, the very-much-alive perpetrator of the Millerstown Herald, once received an article entitled “Why Do I Live?” It was written on both sides of the sheet of foolscap, whereupon P. Anthony in next issue printed this conclusive answer: “You live because you sent your dog-goned rot by mail instead of bringing it in person.”

Melville J. Kerr, a Franklin boy, son of the senior proprietor of the marble-works, is a popular writer of facetiæ and society small-talk. Possibly “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but his cognomen of “Joe Ker” is known to thousands of smiling readers who never heard of Melville. The aspiring youth, believing in the advantages of a big city, journeyed to New York to look for an opportunity that might want a party about his size and style. Unlike Jacob for Rachel, Penelope for Ulysses, the zealots who prayed for Ingersoll’s conversion or the Governor of South Carolina for the Governor of North Carolina to “fill ’em up again,” he didn’t wait long. A soap-mogul liked the ambitious, sprightly young man, introduced him to the swell set and booked him as editor of The Club. Kerr’s refined humor popped and effervesced with more “bead” than ever. He hobnobbed with millionaires, delighted Ward McAlister and married a lovely girl. Blood will tell as surely as a gossip or a tale-bearer. He is now editing The Yellow Kid, a semi-monthly crowded with good things, and raking in wealth at a Klondyke-gait from his newest book, “The World Over,” a graphic and geographic burlesque that is fated to be read the world over. And this is how the “Joe Ker” is the winning card in one oil-region instance.

Last year a compact “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” in harmony with the age of steam and electricity that won’t winnow a bushel of chaff for a grain of wheat, which had run through the winter and spring of 1894-5 in McClure’s Magazine, was published in book-form. Napoleonic ground had been so plowed and harrowed and raked and scraped and sifted by Hugo, Scott, Abbott, Hazlitt, Bourrienne, Madame Junot and a host of smaller fry that it seemed idle to expect anything new concerning the arbiter of Europe. Yet the beauty and freshness and acumen of this “Life” surprised and captivated its myriad readers, whose pleasure it increased to learn that the book was the production of a young woman. The authoress is Miss Ida M., daughter of Franklin S. Tarbell, a wealthy oil-operator. Her childhood was spent at Rouseville, where her parents lived prior to occupying their present home at Titusville. The romantic surroundings were calculated to awaken glowing fancies in the acute mind of the little girl. After graduating from Allegheny College, Meadville, she taught in the seminary at Poland, O., assisted to edit The Chautauquan at Meadville and spent three years in Europe gathering materials for articles on the dark days of Robespierre, Danton, Marat and Marie Antoinette. She wrote for Scribners’, McClure’s and the New-England Magazine, adding to her fame by an exhaustive study of Abraham Lincoln’s youth. Scribners’ will soon publish her biography of Madame Roland, the heroine of the French Revolution. Her success thus early in her career gives fruitful promise of a resplendent future for the vivacious, winsome biographer of the “Little Corporal.”

While many names and terms and phrases peculiar to oil-operations are unintelligible to the tenderfoot as “the confusion of tongues” at Babel, others will be valuable additions to the language. “He has the sand” aptly describes a gritty, invincible character. The fortunate adventurer “strikes oil,” the pompous strutter is “a big gasser,” foolish anger is “pumping roily” and fruitless enterprise is “boring in dry territory.” Misdirected effort is “off the belt,” failure “stops the drill,” a lucky investment “hits the jugular,” a hindrance “sticks the tools” and an abandoned effort “plugs the well.” A man or well that keeps at it is “a stayer,” one that doesn’t pan out is “a duster,” one that cuts loose is “a gusher” or “a spouter.” Fair promise means “a good show,” the owner of pipe-line certificates “has a bundle,” fleeced speculators are “shorn lambs”—not limited to Oildom by a large majority—and the ruined operator “shuts ’er down.” In a moment of inspiration John P. Zane created “the noble producer,” Lewis F. Emery invented “the downtrodden refiner” and Samuel P. Irvin exploited “the Great Invisible Oil-Company.” Some of these epigrammatic phrases deserve to go thundering down the ages with Grant’s “let us have peace,” Cleveland’s “pernicious activity,” and “a sucker is born every minute.”

Nor is the jargon of places and various appliances devoid of interest to the student of letters. Oil City, Petroleum Centre, Oleopolis, Petrolia, Greece City—first spelled G-r-e-a-s-e—Gas City, Derrick City and Oil Springs were named with direct reference to the slippery commodity. From prominent operators came Funkville, Shamburg, Tarr Farm, Rouseville, McClintockville, Fagundas, Prentice, Cochran, Karns City, Angelica, Criswell City, Gillmor, Duke Centre and Dean City. Noted men or early settlers were remembered in Titusville, Shaffer, Plumer, Trunkeyville, Warren, Irvineton, McKean, De Golier, Custer City, Garfield, Franklin, Reno, Foster, Cooperstown, Kennerdell, Milton, Foxburg, Pickwick, Parker, Troutman, Butler, Washington, Mannington and Morgantown. Emlenton commemorates Mrs. Emlon Fox. St. Joe recalls Joseph Oberly, a pioneer-operator in that portion of Butler county. Standoff City kept green a contractor who wished to “stand-off” his men’s wages until he finished a well. A deep hole or pit on the bank of the creek, from which air rushed, suggested Pithole. Tip-Top, near Pleasantville, signified its elevated site. Cornplanter, the township in which Oil City is situated, bears the name of the stalwart chief—six feet high and one hundred years old—to whom the land was ceded for friendly services to the government and the white settlers. This grand old warrior died in 1836 and the Legislature erected a monument over his grave, on the Indian reservation near Kinzua. Venango, Tionesta, Conewago, Allegheny, Modoc and Kanawha smack of the copper-hued savage once monarch of the whole plantation. Red-Hot, Hardscrabble, Bullion, Babylon, St. Petersburg, Fairview, Antwerp, Dogtown, Turkey City and Triangle are sufficiently obvious. SistersvilleSistersville, the centre of activity in West Virginia, is blamed upon twin-islets in the river. Alemagooselum is a medley as uncertain in its origin as the ingredients of boarding-house hash. Diagrams are needed to convey a reasonable notion of “clamps,” “seed-bags,” “jars,” “reamers,” “sockets,” “centre-bits,” “mud-veins,” “tea-heads,” “conductors,” “Samson-posts,” “bull-wheels,” “band-wheels,” “walking-beams,” “grasshoppers,” “sucker-rods,” “temper-screws,” “pole-tools,” “casing,” “tubing,” “working-barrels,” “standing-valves,” “check-valves,” “force-pumps,” “loading-racks,” “well-shooters,” “royalty,” “puts,” “calls,” “margins,” “carrying-rates,” “spot,” “regular,” “pipage,” “storage,” and the thousand-and-one things that make up the past and present of the lingo of petroleum.

The Literary Guild is not the smallest frog in the petroleum-pool.

To raise twenty-five-hundred dollars for an annex to the hospital, the ladies of Oil City, on February twelfth, 1896, issued the “Woman’s Edition” of the Derrick. It was a splendid literary and financial success, realizing nearly five-thousand dollars. This apt poem graced the editorial page:

THE GIRL AND THE EDITOR.

D. A. Denison, the lively editor of the Bradford Era, is rarely vanquished in any sort of encounter. A “sweet-girl graduate” wrote a story and wanted him to print it. Thinking to let her down gently, he remarked: “Your romance suits me splendidly, but it has trivial faults. For instance, you describe the heroine’s canary as drinking water by ‘lapping it up eagerly with her tongue.’ Isn’t that a peculiar way for a canary to drink water?” “Your criticism surprises me,” said the blushing girl in a pained voice. “Still, if you think your readers would prefer it, perhaps it would be better to let the canary drink water with a teaspoon.” Dennison wilted like an ice-cream in July, promised to publish the story and the girl walked away mistress of the situation.