osed that girl would turn
out--_greedy_."

The mother's countenance slowly wrinkled into lines of grief and worry,
she wrung her hands and rocked from side to side. "I dunno what's come
over the child," she moaned, tearfully. "She behaves so queer over them
silk stockin's an' corsets an' lingeries an' things that she skeers me.
Sometimes I'm afeerd she's goin' crazy--or something."

CHAPTER IX

No industry can boast a history more dramatic, more exciting, than that
of oil. From the discovery of petroleum, on through the development of
its usefulness and the vast expansion of its production, the story is
one of intense human interest, and not even the story of mining has
chapters more stirring or more spectacular.

The average man has never stopped to consider how close he is to the
oil business or how dependent he is upon it; from babyhood, when his
nose is greased with vaseline, to the occasion when a motor hearse
carries him on his last journey, there is not often a day when he fails
to make use of mineral oil or some of its by-products. Ocean liners and
farmers' plows are driven by it; it takes the rich man to his office
and it cleans the shopgirl's gloves; it gives us dominion over the air
and beneath the waters of the sea. We live in a mechanical age, and
without oil our bearings would run hot and civilization, as we know it,
would stop. It is the very blood of the earth.

Oil production is a highly specialized industry, and it has developed a
type of man with a type of mind quite as characteristic as the type of
machinery employed in the drilling of wells. The latter, for instance,
appears at first glance to be crude and awkward, but as a matter of
fact it is amazingly ingenious and extremely efficient, and your
oil-field operator is pretty much the same. Nor is there any business
in which practical experience is more valuable. As a result, most of
the big oil men, especially those engaged in production, are graduates
of the school of hard knocks; they are big-fisted, harsh-handed fellows
who are as thoroughly at home on the "thribble board" of a derrick as
at a desk or a directors' table, and they are quite as colorful as the
oil fields themselves. Their lives are full and vigorous.

Of all the oil excitements, that which occurred in North Texas was
perhaps the most remarkable; at any rate, the world has never witnessed
such scenes as were enacted there. The California gold rush, the great
Alaskan stam