Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1879 — Misadventure of a Rochester Traveling Man. [ARTICLE]

Misadventure of a Rochester Traveling Man.

William McMills, wholesale produce dealer of Rochester, N. Y., is very anxious to sqe “Texas Jack.” Not the dramatist who every season slaughters moro Indians on the stage than tho combined tepees of all the Plains’ tribes ever sheltered; but a very different person, as will shortly be seen. The police of New York and Rochester are equally desirous to meet tho gontleman from the Southwest. So far, however, they have been by no means successful, and Mr. McMills’ opinion of the matter is well summed up in his remarks to a Mercury reporter: “To blazes with your detectives. Pve seen the last of my eighteen hundred dollars and do mistake.” On Thursday afternoon Mr. McMills left Rochester to supervise the transportation and sale in Mew York of some thirty-odd thousand bushels of potatoes. After passing Oswego an unexpected accident of some sort brought the train to a halt After it started again a young lady entered the Car in which the produce dealer was and, ’'commenced looking anxiously about. ShejWa* a' very pretty young lady, with light blonde hair and excessively glossy silks and sealskins, and, as Mr. McMills fancied at the time, a most confiding-bios eye. The gallant WwliPpimi 6e“#as*irithfesreS:' ir<r watched the young lady narrowly, and suddenly found the meliingorbs directs ed full upon him. They were auffhsed in tears, and Mr.‘McMills instanta-

neously sympathised with their distress. . >• “ Can I do anything for you, miss?*’’' he asked. “My father, sir,” responded the young lady, anxiously; “he got off to see what was the matter, and I’m afraid he has been left behind. I am so worried.” To Mr. McMills to think in such a case was to act. Gallantly seating the young lady in his seat, he took mental notes of hor missing parent’s description and went in search of him. Tho auest was a vain one, and he returned disappointed to find an elderly person in an ulster and a soft ensconced ’at hfs fair friend’s side. “O, papa! here is tho gentleman now,” exclaimed the young lady. “Do thank him, you naughty wanderer. You don’t know what trouble he has taken to And you.” Then the gentleman in the ulster did ample justice to his daughter’s command. His thanks were as profuse os they were ardent, and the three wore soon upon the best of terms. The stranger presented himself as Joshua Strucker,* an opulent cattle dealer of Buffalo. Ho was on his way to New York to purchase a trousseau for his shortly-to-bc-wedded daughter Julia—otherwise the young lady of the sealskins. His bonhomie and his ready conversational gifts charmed the Rochester potato merchant as much as his daughter’s beauty had, and the little party became a very merry one indeed. At last, when the conversation began to flag, a game of cards was suggested. The young lady assisted in a tew hands of railroad euchor, and pleaded weariness and adjourned to a sleeping berth. Her parent produced a pocket flask and extended to his new friend the courtesy of a drink. Meanwhile the game continued. No money was involved, and Mr. McMills was a constant winner. At last the Buffalo man threw down his cards impatiently. “It’s no use,” he said; “you beat me as bad as that fellow did at the game, so I give up.” Naturally curious, Mr. McMills inr quired '•what the game was. The stranger reKictantly confessed that it was monte. He had been beaten out of SIOO at it while the train was stopped. Here were the very cards he had lost on and which he had bought from the sharper for an odd five dollars. And he produced three well- worire&rds, one of which bore a very palpable grease spot on its back. “Ho did it in this way,” he exclaimed, and forthwith commenced to mix the cards up so clumsily that a strabismio child would have detected each one. Now, Mr. McMills had heard of monte before, and had read of It, and knew, as he fancied, every point of the deceptive game at which so many confiding natives of the country districts have come to grief. But the Buffalo man evidently knew less, and his new friend kindly undertook to explain its mysteries to him. While the explanation was in progress the young lady returned. She was afraid to remain alone in the sleeping-car, and demanded that pa should come to her protection. The new game interested her. It was so very funny! Wouldn’t the strange gentleman explain it to her, too? Of course he would. And he did. The result can be quite as readily imagined as described. A small bet was offered by the young lady. She lost. Mr. McMills gallantly offered another to indemnify her. But he won, much to his disappointment*. Then papa took a hand in, and then a.gentlemanly stranger in the next seat begged leave to look at the performance. To make a long story short, Mr. McMiUs went to sleep at one o’clock minus S9OO in money and two checks for S9OO more, but with enough of his Buffalo friend’s whisky in him to sleep soundly in spite of his losses—so soundly that when he awoke and went to his late friend’s berth to rouse him he found it empty. All that he could learn w«3 that Mr. Strucker and his charming daughter had got off at three a. m. at a way station. He applied to headquarters as soon as he arrived here, and from his description his Buffalo acquaintance was recognized as Texas Jack, who, under a score or more aliases, has been illustrating the beauties of monte over all the railroads of the United States for the past thirty years. The female who so cleverly impersonated his daughter is supposed to be a well-known shop-lifted of this city, known to the police as “ Blonde Madge,” who shook the slush of New York from her feet some months ago, leaving a couple of unserved warrants behind her. • j One of the two checks which the sharpers succeeded in extracting from their victim was payable to bearer, and is probably a loss. * The other, drawn to his order on a local hank, has been stopped.— N. Y. Sunday mercury.