A PETROLEUM PRINCE.

We take the following from a work recently published in Paris. It
contains the observations of an intelligent French gentleman during a
residence in New York:

An Irishman, thirty years ago, arrived in Philadelphia. He was a mason
by trade, industrious and sober, which is not often the case with
natives of the Emerald Isle. He managed to save a few hundred dollars,
and then married.

He had enjoyed the blessings of matrimony over ten years, when, on
going to his work, early one morning, he found, a short distance from
his house, a basket covered with a linen cloth. He carried it home,
opened it, and a handsome baby appeared before his view. To the child's
clothes was pinned a paper bearing a few lines, asking, in the name of
the Almighty, the person into whose hands the basket might fall, to
take charge of the new-born infant, for the sake of a poor fellow-
creature. The Irishman and his wife, not having any children, at once
adopted the little one, regarding it as a gift sent by Providence. A
few years later, the Irishman, who had by his savings amassed quite a
handsome sum of money, purchased a small farm in a thinly settled
county of Pennsylvania, and there lived quietly and contentedly, until,
one day, in cutting down a tree, it fell upon him, and he was crushed
to death beneath its weight. After this sad occurrence, his widow, with
the help of the adopted child, carried on the business of the farm,
often regretting she could not give the boy an education; but they were
so far from any school, she could not think of sending her son such a
distance from home.