Those Dreadful Drummers

Four or five jolly drummers gathered in the smoking compartment of a Pullman car, and soon their conversation drifted to the great problem of the day—women. In the party also was a frock-coated pastor of serious mien.

The salesmen winked at each other as the minister entered, and then, as if to have some harmless pleasure, one after another started telling of the wonderful virtues of the knights of the grip.

“I am often away from home for four weeks at a time,” one salesman commenced, “and I never even look at another woman.”

“And I am so bound up in the charms of my wife that I’m ashamed to tip the check girls,” declared the next one.

“Why, my wife is so good to me that I won’t allow a woman to wait on me in a restaurant,” said another.

Their conversation sounded too much like unadulterated bunk for the good minister to swallow, and he joined the party by offering a silk hat to any salesman present who could truthfully say he had always been faithful to his wife. The pastor won his point and the conversation soon drifted to other subjects.

The next day one of the salesmen arrived home and soon told his wife of the jolly party in the Pullman smoker.

“But, John,” she said, “why didn’t you take him up?” John’s active salesman brain worked quickly.

“Why, Mable, you know I look like hell in a silk hat.”

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