Rise and fall of the town sport

Country Charlie got acquainted with a bright eyed Shop Girl who knew seven traveling men who came to town regularly. She had a set of rabbit skin furs which made the other girls just crazy with jealousy. Charley got a job as chambermaid in a livery stable and was soon able to swear like the prize home grown Town Sport. Sometimes he was allowed to hold the music for the B flat clarinet player in the K. of P. band when it played No. 23 in the red book. He had a pair of tan shoes and hard hat and used to enjoy going to the shows at Touet’s Opera House and sit in the gallery and get off cute remarks and josh the girls when they came in with their steadies. He made one trip to Chicago with a load of stock and was fast getting in touch with the smart set when he collided with an active brand of drug store whiskey and was pinched by the City Marshal.

His Shop girl shook him for a traveling man for a suspender house from Creston who smoked cigarets and life looked dark and blue.

His room rent was due and he had to take to the hay in the livery barn when the billiard hall was closed at night and he began to hanker for life down on the farm. He was homesick and often at night when he would lay awake on the straw he thought what a bully thing it would be to take old Towser and get after the rabbits down by the creek. He thought of the peach at the crossroads and decided he would go back to the farm.

So he started, but the peach was not for him. She had heard of his gay life in the city and ran away to Indianola with Brother Bill and been spliced by a Justice of the Peace. The old man met him at the gate with a pitch fork and told him to go west and grow up with the country and he left a sadder and slightly wiser man. –Moral, this teaches us not to despise the old farm and rush into the gay but treacherous city life, but to take care of the stock and later on run for Constable of Justice of the Peace. -1907