Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1892 — It Made Them Sick. [ARTICLE]

It Made Them Sick.

The town of Dexter can boast the Hardest-hearted set of wags to be found anywhere, says tho Lewiston (Me.) Journal. The most of them are constantly on the lookout for the subject of a practical joke, and hardly a day passes that they do not find one. The latest is on the fresh cigar drummer. who thought his merchandise better than anything of the sort on earth. In his travels he carries in his coat pocket a big cigar case and advertises himself and his goods by giving freely of his brands to any who will smoke them. He was in Dexter this week. The day was hot, and he left his coat and cigar case on a chair while he sat in a cooling draught in the door. One of the jokers got a rubber comb and broke out twenty teeth. They were small and sharp. Into the end of each cigar a rubber tooth was pushed, and with a small nail the tooth was driven in out of sight. The tobacco leaf came together, completely hiding the tooth. Then the jokers waited for the fun. Soon the cigar man, well cooled down, began business. Going into a store, he lirst gave away a cigar, which the intended customer began to smoke. Soon the air was odoriferous, not with a sweet and fragrant smell, but with one not unlike that of old gunlodks or burning rubber boots. The customer sickened and threw away the weed, and said he had on hand cigars enough to last all summer. Another dealer had a similar experience. Still another was given a day’s nausea, and when that drummer got through with his gifts he was hated by nearly every cigar dealer In town. lie packed his goods in sorrow, and does not know to this day that an old rubber comb from the stable box ot a hostler wrecked him commercially in Dexter.