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Show 1836- 1837] Fogg's Far West 199 and the basest propensities of humanity, one seldom is fated to witness. During that public land- sale, indeed, I beheld so much of the selfishness, the petty meanness, the detestable heartlessness of man's nature, that I turned away disgusted, sick at heart for the race of which I was a member. We are reproached as a nation by Europeans for the contemptible vice of avarice; is the censure unjust? Parson Taylor tells us that Satan was the first speculator in land, for on a certain occasion he took Jesus up into an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory thereof, and said to him, " All these things will I give to thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me," when, in fact, the devil did not own one inch of land to give! " Think of the devil's brazen phiz, When not an inch of land was hisl" [ 177] Yet it is to be apprehended that not a few in our midst would not hesitate to barter soul and body, and fall down in worship, were a sufficient number of acres spread out before them as the recompense. Among other objects worthy the traveller's notice in passing through Edwardsville is a press for the manufacture of that well- known, agreeable liquid, castor ail: it is situated within the precincts of what is termed, for distinction, the " Upper Village." The apparatus, by means of which the oil is expressed from the bean and clarified, is extremely simple, consisting merely of the ordinary jack- screw. One bushel of the castor beans - pdma Christi - yields nearly two gallons of the liquid. The only previous preparation to pressing is to dry the beans in an oven. This establishment m has been in operation upward of ten years, and has rendered its proprietor, Mr. Adams, a wealthy man. 1* 4 He m In May, 1838, it was entirely consumed by fire.- FLAOO. m John Adams later retired from business, and was elected sheriff on the Whig ticket. Flagg* s account seems to be considerably overdrawn.- ED. |