Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1898 — Circus Agent Hits A Snag. [ARTICLE]

Circus Agent Hits A Snag.

How He Was Held Up for Tickets by a Farmer. “One day I was doin’ a route,” said the Wallace circus agent, “an’ keepintmy lamps peeled for daubs, when I gets a big new barn standin’ at a cross roads. I halts my driver, gets out my dope an’ paper, an’ gets tp work. The first thing I does, of course, is to throw up my stringer clear across the side of the barn. I just finished it an’ was standin’ back figurin’ my space to put under it one of the nine sheet bills of the Nelson family, when I sees an old rube standin’ off to one side watchin’ me. He was red hot. “ ‘Say, young feller,’ he says, an’ he was frothin’ at the mouth; never seen a man so wild. ‘Say,’ he says, ‘what ye mean by pastin’ my bran-new barn up with all that gol-darned paper Dod skin ye/ tear ’em down!’ “I give the old guy a ‘con’ talk an’ tried to< jolly him up, but he wouldn’t stand for it till I offered him a ‘comp’ to the show, an’ that nailed him. He told me to go ahead, an’ I began to throw up the Nelson family. I got it about half up when the old hayseed says: “ ‘Come, come, sonny, that won’t never do. I’m a deacon in a church, an’ I can’t have no gal with no clothes on pasted on the side of my barn.’ “I argued and chewed the rag with him for another ten minutes, an’ squared it by givin’ him another ‘comp’ so’s I could finish the job. I got up the Nelson family, an’ started on a giraffe three sheets, an’ he stops me again. “ ‘’Tain’t no use, sonny; here, take yer tickets. have to scrape them papers off. I’ll get a hoe.’

“ ‘Why, what's the matter now?” I asks him. “ ‘Why, I’ve only got two tickets here for me an’ the ole woman, an’ we won’t darst to go, lessen we take my boy Eph along.’ “Well, I had to give him a ‘comp’ for Eph, an’ I finishes the giraffe three-sheet. Then I steps over to the other side of the nine-sheets an’ begins throwin’ up another three-sheet when the old squeeze lays his hand on me an’ says: “ ‘Say, if Eph goes, Liza’ll have to go, too.’ “ ‘You’ve got all you’re goin’ to get,’ I says. ‘I ain’t allowed to give more than one ‘comp’ to any rube, an’ here you’ve got three.’ “ ‘Tear ’em down, then; tear ’em down, ‘he says. “Well sir, I had to give him a ‘comp’ for ‘Lize,’ an’ I had to give him another for his hired man, an’ two more for his brother an’ sister-in law in town before he’d let me put up a date. • That old sucker worked me for seven ‘comps' before I got through, an' when I drove away I felt as if I’d been up against a badger game.”—Washington Star.