The town watched the operations with alternate scorn and interest. It was facetious when water and quicksands were encountered, and inclined to be sarcastic when work was suspended on account of [p203] the weather. But one day, after the pipe had been driven to a considerable depth and the rock below had been drilled for six inches, the drill suddenly fell into a crevice, and upon investigation the hole was found to be nearly full of petroleum.
The Cove promptly went into a state of acute hysteria. Speculation spread like the measles, breaking out in all manner of queer and unexpected places. Everybody who could command a dollar promptly converted it into oil stock. Miss Jim Fenton borrowed money from her cousin in the city, and plunged recklessly; the Missionary Band raffled off three quilts and bought a share with the proceeds; Mr. Tucker foreclosed two mortgages on life-long friends in order to raise more money; while the amount of stock purchased by Mr. D. Webster Opp was limited only by his credit at the bank.
The one note of warning that was sounded came from Mrs. Fallows, who sat on the porch of Your Hotel, and, like the Greek Chorus, foretold the disasters [p204] that would befall, and prophesied nothing but evil for the entire enterprise. Even the urbane Jimmy became ruffled by her insistent iteration, and declared that she “put him in mind of a darned old whip-o’-will.”
But Mrs. Fallows’s piping note was lost in the gale of enthusiasm. Farmers coming into town on Saturday became infected and carried the fever into the country. The entire community suspended business to discuss the exciting situation.
These were champagne days for Mr. Opp. Life seemed one long, sparkling, tingling draft and he was drinking it to Guinevere. If her eyes drooped and she met his smile with a sigh, he saw it not, for the elixir had gone to his head.
Compelled to find some outlet for his energy, he took advantage of the Cove’s unwonted animation and plunged into municipal reform. “The Opp Eagle” demanded streets, it demanded lamp-posts, it demanded temperance. The right of pigs to take their daily siesta in [p205] the middle of Main Street was questioned and fiercely denied. Dry-goods boxes, which for years had been the only visible means of support for divers youths of indolent nature, were held up to such scathing ridicule that the owners were forced to remove them.
The policies suggested by Mr. Opp, the editor, were promptly acted upon by Mr. Opp, the citizen. So indignant did he become when he read his own editorials that nothing short of immediate action was to be considered. He arranged a reform party and appointed himself leader. Mat Lucas, he made Superintendent of Streets; Mr. Gallop, chairman of the Committee on City Lights. In fact, he formed enough committees to manage a Presidential campaign.
The attitude of the town toward him was that of a large lump of dough to a small cake of yeast. It was willing to be raised, but doubtful of the motive power.
“I’d feel surer,” said Jimmy Fallows, “if his intellect was the standard [p206] size. It appears so big to him he can’t get his language ready-made; he has to have it made to order.”
But since the successful management of the oil-wells, Mr. Opp’s opinion was more and more considered. In the course of a short time the office of “The Opp Eagle” became the hub about which the township revolved.