The Ghost at the Banquet

This was Mr. Sprudell's only essay at promoting, but he knew how it was done. A good dinner, wine, cigars; and he had gone the ingenious guild of money-raisers one better by an actual, uncontrovertible demonstration of the safety and value of his scheme.

His personal friends already had an outline of the proposition, with the promise that they should hear more, and now, after a dash through "Spurr's Geology Applied to Mining," he was prepared to tell them all that their restricted intelligences could comprehend.

When the right moment arrived, Mr. Sprudell arose impressively. In an attentive silence, he gave an instructive sketch of the history of gold-mining, beginning with the plundering expeditions of Darius and Alexander, touching lightly on the mines of Iberia which the Roman wrestled from the Carthagenians, and not forgetting, of course, the conquest of Mexico and Peru inspired by the desire for gold.

When his guests were properly impressed by the wide range of his reading, he skillfully brought the subject down to modern mines and methods, and at last to his own incredible good fortune, after hardships of which perhaps they already had heard, in securing one hundred and sixty acres of valuable placer-ground in the heart of a wild and unexplored country--a country so dangerous and inaccessible that he doubted very much if it had ever been trod by any white foot beside his own and old "Bill" Griswold's.

The climax came when he dramatically announced his intention of making a stock company of his acquisition and permitting Bartlesville's leading citizens to subscribe!