Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1874-11-19
A Warming to Our Country Cousins

The mishaps of our country cousin
freshly arrived in Chicago have served
to point many moral and to adorn
many tale. The newspaper, no less
than the stage, has made us familiar
with tho raw and curly pated youth,
who, dressed in a spick-span Lew suit
of "store Clothes" and wearing a
gorgeous neck-tie with huge breast
pin, no sooner finds himself in the
metropolis of the West than he makes
the acquaintance of some specious and
cunning sharper. From that moment
his adventures and experiences are ex-
ceedingly curious, even though his
career should not end as the country
mans life ends in Gays "Trivia." Suf-
flee it to say that few hours generally
serve to relieve him of his money and
send him back to his native place
sadder if not always wiser man, but
scanty clothes on his shoulders, and
nothing at all in his pockets.
The doleful experiences of William
Whitcomb in Chicago furnish case in
point. A resident of Buchanan county,
Iowa, this youth reached the city en-
route for Ohio on last Friday. Being
lover of sweet sounds, he brought his
fiddle with him. Not quite a dozen
yards from the depot, his bucolic ap-
pearance attracted the keen eye of two
sharpers, and his doom was sealed. A
friendship was Immediately struck mp,
and the trio went first to an auction
store on Madison street, where the Iowa
youth invested thirteen dollars in gold
watch. The watch he returned, on the
recommendation Of his friends next
day, receiving back six dollars from the
liberal salesman. This little transac-
ton happily adjusted, the two pitiless
sharpers, who, by the way, represented
themselves to be the proprietors of the
Matteson House, took their willing dupe
to a concert saloon in West Side cell
lar. There our Iowan spent not only
his six dollars in treating the lovely
singers, but left a gold watch, valued at
ninety dollars, and his fiddle, valued at
sixty dollars, to settle the score. On
going to see his friends at the Matte
| son, the poor elbow was turned out of
doors, and q he went to the police.
Detective Flynn found the sharpers,
as well as the keeper of the concert sa-
loon, but as nothing could be proven
against them they were discharged.
The odd point of this and all similar
stories Is the astonishing stupidity of
the victim. II is not easy to under
stand how any man in his senses should
make the acquaintance of perfect
strangers, accompany them to a mock
auction store, go about concert saloons
with them, and give them every oppor-
tunity to fleece him in the most bare
faced manner. But it appears that no
amount of warning has the least effect
On certain peculiarly constituted per-
sons, who must be blessed either with q
transcendent belief in the benevolence
and innocence of human nature, or with
a philosophical disregard for the safety
of their purse. The thimble-rigger has
to-day as many dupes as he had twenty
years ago. The "drop game" empties
rustic pocketbooks with as much facility
as ever. The confidence man still takes
In the usual number of victims. If one
believed in the doctrine of the survival
of the tittest, one might look forward to
time at which such foolish persons
must perish out of existence on account
of their own imbecility; butin truth that
time is a long way of. Meanwhile our
| country cousins with greenbacks, gold
watches, and fddles will do well to take
some more or less brief and effectual
warning from the adventures of the
Iowa youth, and be somewhat less in
clined to make friends with amiable
strangers whom they meet hanging
around our railway depots.-Chicago