Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1895-05-31
A RIVAL TO OWNEY.
An Old Shoe Making the Rounds OF the
Railway Mail Service.

An Old Shoe Making the Rounds OF the
Railway Mail Service.
The railway postal clerks running
into the tri-cities, who recently were
entrusted with the care of the much
Travelled r. NJ. S. dog, Owney, now
have another r. p. o. nomad. 1t
arrived in Davenport the other day,
and is nothing more nor less than
the celebrated. travelling shoe. that
was started by some wag of a postal
clerk at Watertown, Wis, some two
years ago. with request to the pos
:al clerks in whose mail it was found
to add their tags and pass it along.
1t was marked for a return to a mu-
scum of railway postoffice curios in
Watertown after Dec. %, 1895. Since
| then it has been on the road contin-
uously.
1t is common $3.50 shoe, of the
sort that. is commonly put to hard
usage. 1t was well worn by its
owner, till it was past doing fur
Their service with any show of re-
pectability for itself or for him, and
then-it was given good Pullman
Palace Car company shine. labeled
with plain directions, and started.
A big steel wire file is attached. This
has been filled with tags that have
been attached to it by the clerks
through whose hands it has passed,
and another one like it has been
added, and likewise filled. The shoe
is quite heavy, but the weight of the
tags exceeds its own. 1t came in
from Leavenworth. Kan. and
went back over the southwest line of
the Rock Island the other night,
bound for Kansas City.
The last tag added to its big bum
die was the contribution of Assistant
Postmaster Warren Teele, of Daven-
port. MIR. Teele woos the muse to
this strain:
This shoe belonged to a Chicago girl:
II proved too small. so she gave il u twirl.
| 1t land, safe in K. r. q. car,
| Since then it's travelled ever SO far;
pray you will keep it on the Iun
30 the postal clerks can have some fun.
Warren Teele.
| Some Other Inscriptions.
b. G. Arnold, of Princeton, Mo-,
writes:
All therel A-choo! "a shoe)
| You heed a boorin'-or a foot in. you
Go away, old shoe!
Pass this undressed kid along.
I'm little modest myself" is the
contribution of j. l.. Polk. from Pa
cific Junction to McCook, Neb.
w. F. Carney of the same run adds
merely ..Shoe Fly"
c. &. Baker, Denver postoflice,
adds, "Around the World in so
Days"
c. S. Hawley, same Office, asks
with evident interest, s.Say, Sweet
Marie. does this belong to Trilby?"
Sweet Marie Is name that occurs
naturally to a Denver man. Cy War
man, the author, lives there.
Charles Winfield, on the Denver &
Fort Worth run, gives it as his opin-
ion that 1.-The Fools are not all dead
yet"
The tags show that it was pouched
through from Albany to Colorado.
The eastern clerks seem not to have
had the leisure of their friends in
the west, or else they had not the
time. There is less eXuberance or
iwit among their contributions at an v
rate. but once in while one of the
Yankee boys breaks out into senti-
ment.
Ralph Ernest Dickson, of Bangor,
Me-, expresses an earnest hope
MAY its sole have eternal rest"
j. e. Durrance, of jacksonville,
Fla, writes under date of the recent
frost down that way. Now on its
way out of Florida"
Another Florida clerk dropped
into poesy-
| ''She Is a good old shoe
| And Travelled mauv mile.
| And il, when she gets home,
| The own, T doesn't smile.