Read "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Harve," said Annabelle, "there's time for you to show Mr. Ross over the place before dinner. " And so Bunny got to see what a country place could be like, so that he could make his father give him one. But Harvey Manning did not make a very good escort. To show off a showplace you need someone of an admiring disposition, whereas "Harve" had seen too many places, and was inclined to patronize them all.
There were almost as many buildings on this estate as there were tanks at the Paradise refinery; only these were Gothic tanks, with miniature towers and steeples and crenellations and machicolations. There was no chapel or place of worship, nor tombs of ancient abbots; but there was a gymnasium, with a swimming pool of green marble, and a bowling alley, and squash courts and tennis courts, and a nine hole golf course, and a polo field -- everything you would find at the most elaborate country club. There was a stable with saddle horses ridden mostly by grooms, and a library read only by motion picture directors looking up local color -- or at any rate that was Harvey's tale about it.