A great find of petroleum is reported from Beaumont in
Texas. Little more than a week ago a petroleum spring was accidentally tapped, and has been spouting out ever since in a steady stream two hundred feet high and six inches in diameter. As the output of this single well is estimated at more than twenty-five thousand barrels daily, hundreds of borings have been made in all directions in the last few days, experts from Ohio and Pennsylvania are "wildly stampeding into Texas," special trains are being run between Beaumont and neighbouring towns for the benefit of the "oil maniacs," and syndicates and companies are being formed by the score. "The fever has affected all classes of the community, even the lawyers, with the result that the Courts have had to close their doors and suspend business." It is strange how proverbs lose their significance in an altered environment. When the Romans wanted to say that a man was as quiet as a lamb they said he was oleo tranquillior. Nowadays oil is second only to gold as a disturber of equanimity.
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