The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by Ticknor and Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.
I will go and see the oil, remarked Miselle, at the end of a reverie of ten minutes.
Caleb laid the Morning Journal upon the table, and prepared himself calmly to accept whatever new dispensation Providence and Miselle had allotted him.
Whaling? inquired he.
No, not whaling. I am going to the Oil Springs.
By all means. They lie in the remotest portion of Pennsylvania; they are inaccessible by railway; such conveyances and such wretched inns as are to be found are crowded with lawless men, rushing to the wells to seek their fortunes, or rushing away, savage at having utterly lost them. At this season the roads are likely to be impassable from mud, the weather to be stormy. When do you propose going?
Next Monday, replied Miselle, serenely.
And with whom? You know that I cannot accompany you.
I did not dream of incurring such a responsibility. I go alone.
Caleb resumed the Morning Journal. Miselle wrote a letter, signed her name, and tossed it across the table, saying,—
There, I have written to Friend Williams, who has, as his sister tells me, set up a shanty and a wife on Oil Creek. I will go to them and so avoid your wretched inns, and at the same time secure a guide competent to conduct my explorations. As for the conveyances, the roads, and the lawless travellers, if men are not afraid to encounter them, surely a woman need not be.