Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1881 — Horace Greeley and the Ticket Agent. [ARTICLE]

Horace Greeley and the Ticket Agent.

A reformed ticket agent, a man now engaged in a mercantile pursuit, and who looks back with a profound melancholy and remorse to his wicked career, as he sailed in as a ticket agent, told me that once, in his sinful days, he was employed at Chicago on a through line from that incorporated Boreas on the la’<e to New York city, which, made up of a new combination, was “bucking” against Vanderbilt. To extend its custom the combination had at Chicago a corps of able-bodied runners, to seize wayfarers by the throat and fetch them up to the ticket agent, where the innocent traveler was to be talked into a ticket over the combination.

One day and able-bodied ruffian came leading up a rough looking customer, who wished to purchase a ticket for New York by the way of Cleveland. But evidently the old white-hatted, loose-trousered, coarsebooted countryman, with his white head and goggling look, did not know what he wanted. It was for the ticket agent to care for him, and so he rattled on with ticket in hand until the venerable, goggle-eyed old shuffletoes had extracted from a fat wallet the price and shambled awkwardly away. “Say, old fellow,” asked a friend who happened to be in the office, “dp Sou know who you sold a ticket to len?” • “Some old fool of a corn-cracker.” “Not a bit of it—that was Horace Greeley.” “Ger whillicans! and he wanted to go to Cleveland?” “Yes, he is billed to lecture there, and the Tribune will give your combination the devil for the swindle.” “That’s so. Here, you put your cheek to this hole till I find him.” Away ran the ticket agent. It was not dincult to find the hotel at which the venerable philosopher lodged. The ticket agent found him in the reading room pouringover a tale issue of the Tribune. He tapped Horace on the shoulder, and the philosopher looked up with the childlike expression offhis that seemed to come out from open eyes and mouth. “I beg your pardon,” said the agent, “but I sold you a ticket to New York awhile since, and I made a mistake.” “In the money, I suppose?” replied Horace, dryly. “No, sir; in the route. I remembered after you left you said Cleveland. Now the ticket I gave you will not take you to Cleveland.” “The hell it won’t,” cried Greeley, starting up. “Well, young man. I can tell you that would be a great disappointment to Cleveland.” “I don’t know anything about that; but I did not want any man to miss his way through any fault of mine. So I’ve been In every hotel in Chicago after you.” “The devil you have.” “I have. 'l’here is the right ticket. It’s over a rival line. But my honor, sir, rises above trick. I bought the right ticket for you, and if you give me the old one we will be even.”

“Young man,” said Horace, fishing from his capacious pocket the ticket of the combination, “you are very ijood; too good; come to think of it, »o good for a ticket agent. Leave that, good young man, before your innocent nature is corrupted, or your Patent Screw and Podauger line is burs fed up. Go west, young man, go west.”— Don in Waahington Capital.