* * * * *
Five years later came the oil boom!
Everybody knows now that it flowed in prodigious quantities into the
vats of one man, whom we shall speak of with the respect which the
billionaire inspires, as the Autocrat of Petroleum. Let us hasten to
add that we shall approach him in the person of his agent, who, so far
as Uncle Jap was concerned, doubtless acted in defiance of the will of
the greatest church builder and philanthropist in the world.
Oil was struck in pints, quarts, gallons, buckets, and finally in
thousands and tens of thousands of barrels! It flowed copiously in our
cow-county; it greased, so to speak, the wheels--and how ramshackle
some of them were!--of a score of enterprises, it saturated all things
and persons.
Now, conceive, if you can, the triumphant I-told-you-so-boys
expression of Uncle Jap. He swelled again visibly: head first, then
body and soul. The county kowtowed to him. Speculators tried to buy
his ranch, entreated him to name a price.
"I'll take half a million dollars, in cold cash," said Uncle Jap.
The speculators offered him instead champagne and fat cigars.
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