In all the excitement after his well came in, poor Edwin Drake got shoved aside and nearly lost in the rush. He was the hero, all right, but one of those heroes who seems to have been chosen in a game of blindfold, like Pin the Tail on the Donkey. To tell you the truth, if this were fiction, I'd invent a new hero, more in the style to which we're accustomed in glossy biographical novels, with large, firm sins and virtues.

-- from The Great Oildorado (1959)