Until we have first been sowers.”—Alice Cary.
“Gained the lead, and kept it, and steered his journey free.”—Will Carleton.
“A cargo of petroleum may cross the ocean in a vessel propelled by steam it has generated, acting upon an engine it lubricates and directed by an engineer who may grease his hair, limber his joints, and freshen his liver with the same article.”—Petrolia, A.D. 1870.
“Friction, not motion, is the great destroyer of machinery.”—Engineering Journal.
“Here was * * * a battle of Marengo to be gained.”—Balzac.
BIG ROCK BELOW FRANKLIN.
Cheap and abundant light the island-well on Oil Creek assured the nations sitting in darkness. If there are “tongues in trees” and “sermons in stones” the trickling stream of greenish liquid murmured: “Bring on your lamps—we can fill them!” The second oil-well in Pennsylvania, eighteen miles from Col. Drake’s, changed the strain to: “Bring on your wheels—we can grease them!” America was to be the world’s illuminator and lubricator—not merely to dispel gloom and chase hobgoblins, but to increase the power of machinery by decreasing the impediments to easy motion. Friction has cost enough for extra wear and stoppages and breakages “to buy every darkey forty acres and a mule.” The first coal-oil for sale in this country was manufactured at Waltham, Mass., in 1852, by Luther Atwood, who called it “Coup Oil,” from the recent coup of Louis Napoleon. Although highly esteemed as a lubricator, its offensive odor and poor quality would render it unmerchantable to-day. Samuel Downer’s hydro-carbon oils in 1856 were marked improvements, yet they would cut a sorry figure beside the unrivaled lubricant produced from the wells at Franklin, the county-seat of Venango. It is a coincidence that the petroleum era should have introduced light and lubrication almost simultaneously, one on Oil Creek, the other on French Creek, and both in a region comparatively isolated. “Misfortunes never come singly,” said the astounded father of twins, in a paroxysm of bewilderment; but happily blessings often come treading closely on each other’s heels.
