THE PEN WAS DROPPED.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2671, 24 August 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE PEN WAS DROPPED.

A client of a well-known lawyer of this city went into the latter'a office the other flay to si»rn some important papers. After they had been read to him and approved a clerk in the office, in handing the client a pen to affix his signature, dropped it on the floor. The lawyer himself sprang from his chair with au exclamation of alarm, and hurriedly picked up the pen and placed it in his client's hands. " The dropping of a pen about to be used for such a purpose as this," said the lawyer after the paper had been signed, " always makes me nervous and uncomfortable, for a case where a delay of not more than fifteen seconds, caused by the dropping of a pen with which a man was to sign his name to a will, lost to a worthy purpose a legacy of 100,000 dols, always comet fo my mind. That was the case of H. R. Rouse; one of tho pioneer oil operators on Oil Creek, who made a large fortune early in tho business. He was a native of Warren County, and in 1861 his wells were yielding him a daily iucome above tho average man's annual income. He fell a victim to the first great oil well fire in the oil regions, which occurred in April, 1801, when tho famous Hawley & Merrick well began to suddenly spoilt oil and gas in such quantities tint the oil ran to waste and flowed over the ground in sill directions) and thn gas filled the air for a quarter of a mile round. A triple explosion and conflagration followed. Tho score or more people who had collected to witness thu then novel sight of a flowing well were enveloped in fhe flames, among , thorn H. R. House. He was rescued from death in tho sea of flames by a man named Uria Smith, of Mercer, and at tho risk of his own life and at tho cost of pormanent and awful disfigurement, Rouse was so horribly burned that his recovery was impossible, and, after being carried to a house near by, he insisted on making his will. His eyes were burned to a crisp in their sockets, and ho was oue solid blister from head to foot, but he lay without uttering a moan or a complaint, dictating his will a task that required several hours. When tbo will had been reduced to writing nnd read to him ho was so weak that he cuuld no longer speak, and ho motioned for tho pen to siun the document. When the person who had done the writing dipped the pen in the ink bottlo and Wiis about to plane it in Rouse's band, he dropped it and it rolled under the bed. Not inoro than a quarter of a minute elapsed, before he had recovered it, but when it wjim placed in Rome's hand the hand wsi.s powerless to use it. The bravo old oil prince was dead. Tho will ho thus left unsigned bequeathed 100,000 dols. to tho poor fund of Warreu County. It is also remembered that tho man who had torn the testator from the biinnug mass of oil, was left a handsome leiraey. Rouse'.', heirs, not being legally hound to carry out his wishes, repudiated the moral claims, and Warren County lost her iK'giicv, as did also the man who, at the risk of bis own lifo, saved the oil prince to his family for Christian burial. And that is why tho dropping of a pen gives mo a most uncomfortable iind nervous feolinsr.