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Show .TEH? A:T E.'J TK5.1S. EIw ait I1J i tor !Jcl n Cheap Vai-tiRC to Worae ErposC!-. Tlie custom of sending valentines prevails . to soiHe txtrnt-in Texsw. Some years ao, .having occasion to stop over for a few days in a Texas town, 1 drnpr-cd into tin office of the local nt'vsTn.pr, the Jingle and made the aequaiiiUuiet of the editor. He was a pleasant-faced younf man, ivith a ralhc-r shreT.-il expression. Tt'e talked about the weather, the crops, polities, am! fiiia ly we convened about t. Va'entiiic's Dav, which was not far ciT. D.) they celebrate It much here?' I asked. "As a general thing it is not obserT-cd obserT-cd very much, but last St. Valentine's Dav was an exception." "WliKt wss the occasion of the ex-erpl ex-erpl ion?" 1 caused it myself. There was one man killed and a drug store wrecked." My curiosity was moused, and I asked my new acquaintance to dispel the mystery that seemed to enshroud the celebration of the previous St. Valentine's Day. "I'll tell you how it as. I had just moved here and started my paper. 1 ! was petting e.Ioiin: very well. Subscriptions Sub-scriptions were pouring in at the rate of ten or trtelve a week."' 'The people liked your pnper, then?" "Yes. with the exception of two men. One was a drudst. who took a dislfkc to me, and tried to hound me to death." "In what part'."' "He not only refused to advertise in the Bitrjlc. but lie told everybody tht the paper would not last three months."' "Who was your other adversary:" "lie was a regular touh. He c;ime here with a circus, and was a bad man. lie looked like an ex-prizefighter. Some people said he was New York alderman, and hence fugitive from justice."' "What did you do to incur his enmity?"" en-mity?"" ; "Nothing at all, except I published a little paragraph to the effect that there was a suspicious character in town, lie said at once that it couldn't mean anybody else but himself, and that he was going to break me in two for it the first chance he got." "Do you think he really meant it?" "I know he did, so I resorted to strategy. Every thing is fair in love or in war." "Where does St. Valentine's Day come in?" "That was just what I was going to tell you. I was becoming prematurely swaybacked toting a pistol, so I put up a job on the pair. It was risk-, but out on the frontier you have to learn to take risks." "What did you do?' "I bought a cheap valentine of a tough with a wart as big as an egg plant on his nose, and blue hair, and mailed it to the tough after writing the druggist's name on it. I calculated the tough didn't have brains enough to suppose it might be a trick, and I was rijrht about it.' " Pf hat did he do?" "Just what I expected. lie walked in careless-like and hit the druggist on the jaw." "Hurt him much?" "He turned two summersaults over the soda fountain and brought- up with a thud against the side of the drug slure, so that he encrusted one of the boards with four of his front teeth." "That was pretty bad." "That wasn't all. He jarred the drug store so that five or six large bottles bot-tles of liver regulator tumbled down on him from the top shelf and drenched him with healing balm. However, he retained his presence of mind, and hurled an unbroken bottle through the plate-glass window as the tough dodge'd. He could have put a full-page ad in the Jiwjle for a year for the price of the window, with a complimentary personal notice thrown in." "What did the tough do?" "Tlie tough giabbed up a box of healing ointment and shivered it on the lachrymal gland of the druggist. Tlie druggist retaliated by doublingup the lough with a bottle of queer-colored tonic. According to the directions on the bottle the tonic was to be taken one teaspoonfu! every half hour, but the tough had taken enough at one dose I o tone up the stomach of an or-dinarv or-dinarv man for a month." "What next?" j "The tough followed up his victory by vaccinating his adversary on the ear with a box of carbolic salre, while tkc druggist raised a wen on the touch's arbicular muscle with a bottle of female bitters." "How did it end?" "It ended very tragically.. 'While the whole neighborhood was smelling like a drug store with a barrel of asafedita leaking in the cellar and a chunk of Limbergur cheese on the stove, tlie druggist' sneaked up behind tfce tough and fractured his skull with a compound cathartic poultice tied rip in a towel, and a fearful whack at the base of the ductus urUriiums ." "And all from a cheap valentine judiciously ju-diciously administered?" "Yes," tlie tough sleeps in a shady dell. Tlie druggisl, crazed by his losses has taken to drink, while I got out an extra about the tragedy and made seventy-live dollars in cash, so you see, even the cheap valentine has its uses?" |