“Bright and fair as a Miss in her teens is this beautiful March morning. All nature laughs with gladness. Forest feels glad, the streams sing a glad song in their swim to the sea, Tionesta is glad and the big greyhound Charley Holmes sent Major Hulings wags his sharp tail in token of the gladness and gratitude he cannot otherwise express. He is a gentlemanly, well-bred, $500 purp and got to have his meals regularly.”
“Do unto other men as you would have them do unto you and you wouldn’t have money enough in two weeks to hire a shirt washed.”
“Many a preacher complains of empty pews when they are really not emptier than the pulpit.”
“The man who can please everybody hasn’t got sense enough to displease anybody.”
“To be good and happy kick up your heels and holler Hallelujah!”
“Rev. Brown will preach everybody to hell on the Tubb’s Run Flats, Lord willing, next Sunday, between meals.”
On the twelfth of January, 1862, Walter R. Johns, who struck the territory four weeks previously, issued the initial number of the Oil-City Weekly Register, the first newspaper devoted especially to the petroleum-industry, which it upheld tenaciously for five years. The modest outfit, purchased second-hand at Monongahela City, was shipped to Pittsburg by boat, to Kittanning by rail and to its destination by wagons. The editor, publisher, proprietor and compositor—Mr. Johns outdid Pooh-Bah by combining these offices in his own person—accompanied the expedition to aid in extricating the wagons from mud-holes in which they stuck persistently. In 1866 he retired in favor of Henry A. Dow & Co., who fathered the Daily Register and soon found the cake dough. Farther on Mr. Johns was identified, editorially or in a proprietary way, with the semi-weekly Petrolian and the Evening Register, the Parker Transcript, the Emlenton Messenger, the Lebanon Republican, the Clarion Republican-Gazette and the Foxburg Gazette. Writing with great readiness and heartily in touch with his profession, he took to literary work as a duck takes to water. He and the late Andrew Cone prepared all the petroleum-statistics available in 1862, which, with the gatherings of the years intervening, were published in 1869, under the expressive title of “Petrolia.” From Clarion, his home for some years, Mr. Johns returned to Oil City, doing valuable work for the Derrick and the Blizzard. For seven years he has been employed by the National-Transit Company to compile newspaper-clippings and magazine-articles and arrange records of different kinds from every quarter of the oil-regions. The duty is congenial and he fits the place “like der paper mit der wall.” Mr. Johns is a son of Louisiana and a hero of two wars. During the Mexican trouble he fought under Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, was at the battles of Monterey and Buena Vista and participated in the march from Puebla to the City of Mexico. He served under General Grant in the “late unpleasantness.” The death of his estimable wife several years ago was a terrible blow to the Nestor of petroleum journalism, who has gained distinction as printer, editor, author and soldier.
“Age sits with decent grace upon his visage
And worthily becomes his silver locks;
He bears the marks of many years well spent,