266 THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



have lost capital and labor, and life itself, in the vain pur 

 suit of sudden riches.&quot; 



u I m sorry to hear you talk so, Squire. Ye see I have 

 tried the plan of slow riches for more n forty years, and 

 it s no go. I ve dug airly and late, and stuck tew my 

 business as close as the next man, and I aint out of debt 

 yit. And now if you say there is no chance for sudden 

 riches, I am done for.&quot; 



&quot; Perhaps if you had stuck to the farm more and to the 

 bottle less, the result might have been different.&quot; &quot;I 

 don t see that,&quot; said Jake, gruffly. 



&quot; Well, your neighbors do, and it is no use to try to 

 shift off the faults of the man upon the farm, or the busi 

 ness of farming. Nothing pays better in the long run. 

 There is money in ile, just as there is in gold, only the ile 

 business is not quite so risky. To those who know the 

 ropes, I suppose there isn t any risk at all. The men who 

 buy the land, and get up the companies, as a rule, make 

 money. In the present fever heat of the business, there 

 is no trouble about selling shares, and they mean to sell 

 enough to pay for the land, and line their own pockets, 

 whether they ever strike a drop of ile or not. If they are 

 fortunate enough to strike ile, they make a good thing for 

 their shareholders. If. they do not, their stock is not worth 

 a chaw of tobacco. They do not tell that it costs four or 

 five thousand dollars to sink a well, and that thousands of 

 these wells are bored without ever returning a red cent 

 for the labor. They do not tell how many wells yield lots 

 at first, and, after a while, kind o gin out, like the Pad 

 dy s calf. And what is a hundred acres of land worth, 

 with a dozen dry wells on it ? &quot; 



It is astonishing, Mr. Editor, to see how crazy people 

 are getting on this subject. The Multicaulis fever, thirty 

 years ago, wa n t a priming to this. When I went through 

 your city a few weeks ago, I did not hear much of any 

 thing else talked about. The war was nowhere, dry goods 



