There was one of those old fashioned mistakes occurred on the train from
Monroe to Janesville a week or so ago. A traveling man and a girl who
was going to Milton College sat in adjoining seats, and their satchels
were exactly alike, and the traveling man took the wrong satchel and got
off at Janesville, and the girl went on to Milton.
The drummer went down to Vankirk's grocery and put his satchel on the
counter, and asked Van how his liver was getting along, while he picked
a piece off a codfish and ate it, and then smelled of his fingers and
said “Whew!” Van said his liver was “not very torpid, thank you; how are
you fixed for tea?” The drummer said he wished he had as many dollars as
he was fixed for tea, and began to open his sample case. Van cut off
a piece of cheese and was eating it while he walked along towards the
drummer.
When the case was opened the drummer fell over against a barrel of
brooms, and grasping a keg of maple syrup for support, turned pale and
said he'd be dashed. Van looked in the sample case, and said, “Fixed for
tea! I should think you was, but it wasn't that kind of tea I want.”
There was a long female night-shirt, clapboarded up in front with
trimming and starch, and buttoned from Genesis to Revelations. Van took
a butter tryer and lifted it out, and there was more than a peck measure
full of stuff that never belonged in no grocery. Van said: “If you are
traveling for a millinery house I will send a boy to direct you to a
millinery store.”
The drummer wiped the perspiration from his face with a coffee sack and
told Van he would give him a million dollars if he never would let the
house in Milwaukee know about it, and he chucked the things back in.
“What is this?” said Van, as he held up a pair of giddy looking affairs
that no drummer ever wore on his own person. “Don't ask _me_” says the
drummer, “I am not a married man.”
He took the satchel and went to Milton on the next train. The girl
had opened the satchel which fell to her in the division to show her
room-mate how to make a stitch in crochet, and when the brown sugar,
coffee, tea, rice, bottles of syrup, maccaroni and a pack of cards came
in sight, she fairly squealed. Along after dinner the drummer called and
asked for an exchange, and they exchanged, and it was hard to tell which
blushed the most.