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. Sistersville[Sistersville], 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.
THE WOMAN’S EDITION.
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:
Oh! sad was her brow and wild was her mien,
Her expression the blankest that ever was seen;
She was pained, she was hurt at the plain requisition: