CAUTION TO BE USED.

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of the night, leaving the dreamer to write "Ichabod" on his faithless certificates of stock.

But all this does not condemn these companies in their principles and practical operation. Very often stockholders in worthless companies purchase stock heedlessly and recklessly, and have but themselves to blame for their misfortunes. In this matter, as in every other connected with the practical business of life, care and caution must be exercised; dazzling promises must not be trusted; inflated advertisements must be believed sparingly, in the absence of positive knowledge either of the location, or of the integrity and judgment of the managers of the company.

Nor should extravagant expectations be indulged in, under the best circumstances. This mad and eager haste to be rich induces many to invest all, and more than they really possess, in oil stocks, under the delusive notion that sudden fortune is within their grasp. Among the tens of thousands who are mingling in the oil business in some form or other, it is manifestly impossible that all should become wealthy, for it requires a vast accumulation of money to constitute wealth in these days of petroleum.

Yet, after all, with reasonable care and judgment, and reasonable expectations in regard to a return, small investments in this promises as favorably as any other branch of business. And where there is but a small capital at hand, investment in joint stock companies, when made with care and caution, is the best way of approaching the matter.

At the present time, companies that pay dividends at all, usually declare them monthly. There is a kind of pressure in this that does not always work to the advan

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DEMAND FOR DIVIDENDS.

tage of the company or the stockholders. The great majority of these companies are struggling for popularity and for life itself; and, in order to establish confidence and secure a respectable footing, it is supposed desirable to declare frequent dividends, conveying the idea that the company is in a flourishing condition. This may or may not be the case. Companies that are in a condition, as many of them are, to declare such dividends without straining their capacity or sacrificing their product when the market is dull, may safely do so; but there is a temptation in the way of feeble companies to declare monthly dividends, when, in order to do so, they are obliged to force their product on the market at a very low price, and thus work serious injury to their interests. Still, the demand is for frequent dividends, and for stock that never fails to be reported as paying monthly, even though semiannual, or even yearly dividends would conduce more largely to the prosperity and general interests of the compan!

CHAPTER XX.

ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM.

AND now where shall we look for the origin of this treasure? From what elements is it elaborated? We cannot go with the great Chemist to his laboratory, and look upon the ingredients, and notice the treatment employed there. We cannot notice the number and volume

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of the retorts, nor look upon the mighty furnace fires that promote the distillation, nor can we tell when this mighty supply was laid up in the rocky tanks. Science, although denominated the "star eyed," cannot pentrate the mighty strata of everlasting rocks that lie beneath us, and reveal to us those mysteries of nature. There is a bound that the Almighty has placed when he says, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther."

"Nec scire fas est omnia."

Nature is God's mighty domain; we may traverse a part of this domain, but not the whole extent, for we are finite, and the resources of our minds limited to a narrow horizon. God alone is great! "There is a path that no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen: the lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light."

Nature has her mysteries. The earth has her great secrets. But over all a God of wisdom and goodness presides. Age after age has rolled by, change after change has agitated the history of Time, as forms of beauty have been moulded and marred, as songs of joy have been sung, and requiems of sadness chanted in the great highways and quiet by-paths of life, the living of bygone ages are slumbering quietly in the dust, and the living of the present are hurrying to the same "pale realms of shade." The nations of antiquity have passed off the stage with all their grandeur and littleness, and the nations of modern times are surging and dashing to and fro, like in the wild chaos of ocean's storms.

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TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS.

We go back to the history of time, ere "the morning stars sang together" their joyous refrain as earth emerged from chaos, and there is still a history-a strange, a wondrous, a mysterious existence. But this history is not chronicled in the annals of time; it is written not on pillars of brass, nor leaves of parchment, but upon the mighty leaves of the everlasting rock that make up the volume hidden beneath the earth's surface. This history is written by the same finger that graved the sublime words of the Decalogue on tables of stone upon Mount Sinai.

"The testimony of the rocks" assured us that stupendous changes were working in the earth's constitution before there were created eyes to look upon them, or rational intelligence to become conscious of them—that age after age rolled by under the guidance of the great Governor of all things, all tending to the one great sublime point when earth should emerge from her darkness and gloom, and become a fit abode for man-" Of all God's works the latest and best," a fitting theatre for the great tragedy of all the ages, and all the universe. "Mercy and truth meeting together, and righteousness and peace embracing each other!"

And during all the changes that have elasped since man was placed upon earth, a strange, mysterious work was perhaps going forward beneath us in the earth's bosom. A great dream of science, but perhaps an earnest, glowing reality suggests, that when God's almighty power was gradually preparing the earth for man's dwelling place, rolling away the curtains of darkness, forming channels for oceans and rivers, and heaping up as barriers the mountain chains of earth, his eternal prescience of man's coming need induced him to bury deep

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down in earth's subterranean recesses the imperfect vegetable organisms of a pre-Adamite state, that in the ages to come, coals, and oils, and gases might be drawn forth to supply his wants.

case.

This is not mere. theory. The hand-writing of nature on the rocky pages beneath, assure us that such was the The carboniferous age as revealed to us in the mighty coal strata of the earth assures us that so far, at least, we are drawing our supplies of fuel from the dead organisms of the mighty past; and analogous reasoning would lead us to the conclusion that our present supplies of petroleum are drawn from the same wonderful source, and proceeding from the same mysterious origin.

We find in the coal deposits traces of ferns and leaves of gigantic stature and proportions. Casts of huge boles of trees are found among our fossils, inducing the belief that in some bygone age quantities of vegetable matter, absolutely enormous, were produced on the earth's surface. Now the counsels of the Almighty are one and uniform. From the moment when this world assumed a place in his infinite plan of creation in chaotic confusion, down to the dawn of time, and thence onward to the final epoch in its history, when it will be purified by fire, and made beautiful in purity and holiness, the design was one, to prepare earth for a habitation for man, and the working out of grand and glorious results. The wonderful production of vegetable matter in a bygone age, as the material from which coal and petroleum was to be produced, would be as much a part of that plan as the drying up of the earth's surface to prepare the way for the creation of man.

It was no mere accidental circumstance that this vegetable deposit was changed to coal and oil, nor was