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Show A Id Cat M In. It was the man on whose land natural gas was first struck in the Findlay, O., district, and he was telling some of us about it as we waited in the depot at Col nm baa. "Wall, yon know," he began, ( "my 1 son Bill was a great hand to read. One ; day he laid away a book he had been reading and says to me: " 'Dad, Tve been reading up on minerals miner-als and I'm goin' to find Buthin' right here on oar farm.' " 'Shoo, Bill,' says I, 'but you won't strike nothing outside of cobble stones and worms.' j "But he went at it and begun to dig and bore and fool around and leave me I to hoe the corn, and one day he struck sunthia'. There cum each an infernal smell that both of tut wad drove to the bouse, and then the smell got so bad that we was drove to a neighbor's, and we had to let the hogs out of the pen, or they would have keeled over. " Bill,' 1 Bays, when I got where I could breathe again, 'you said you'd Btrike sunthin', and you have. You've Wasted three months' time gettin" down to whar Christopher Columbus buried about a thousand torn cats, and we've all been driv off the farm in oonsekence. It's my turn now to strike sunthin', and you kin git ready for the all-tiredest lick-in' lick-in' a boy ever got.' "1 give it to him, gontlomen, and then I I went spookin' around to find somebody . who'd buy the farm at about the cost of the barn. A feller who seemed to hev catarrh and didn't mind the smell closed up a deal with me, and I had to grin as I walked off with his money under my arm, I kept on grinnin1 fur about a week, but then I hoard Borne news that ; stopped me, and I guess it's three years ! since I've opened my mouth sideways. I Them dead cats was worth a hundred thousand dollars to me, and I sold 'em for $800 and walked around patting myself my-self on the back fur bein' so all-fired i cute," New York Sun. |