“I jes’ wanted ter ax ef yo know’d my cousin Jim!”

“Who is your cousin Jim?”

“Law, Jim Sickles![Sickles!] I tho’t ez how ev’rybody know’d Jim! He went up No’th arter th’ wah an’ ain’t cum back yit. Ef yo see ’im tell ’im yo seed me!”

A promise to look out for “Jim” satisfied the verdant backwoodsman, who probably had never been ten miles from his shanty and deemed “up No’th” a place about the size of a Tennessee hunting-ground!

The South-Penn and the Forest Oil-Companies, branches of the Standard, have drilled considerably in Kentucky and Tennessee, sometimes finding oil in regular strata and occasionally encountering irregular formations. More operating is required to determine precisely what place to assign these pebbles on the beach as sources of oil-production.

Fair women, pure Bourbon and men extra plucky,

No wonder blue-grass folks esteem themselves lucky—

But wait till the oil-boom gets down to Kentucky!

Let Fortune assume forms and fancies Protean,

No matter for that, there will rise a loud pæan