The story
“Peter McCormick and Henry Benson, professionally were known as ‘Bing-Bang Brothers.’ They said it was because their act was quick, like the explosion of gunpowder. Anyway, the Bing-Bangs were in dire straits. They managed to see one of the best vaudeville agents, but he refused them an engagement. However, the Mayville Carnival Company expressed a desire for their services at a joint salary of $15 for one week, and they accepted. Arriving at Mayville they found that the carnival had failed before it started, owing to the fact that the daughter of the treasurer had eloped with a drummer, taking the bank roll along. Bing and Bang were far from New York. They pawned all the clothes they had in their large hamper trunk, but only obtained a little more than the price of one ticket to Gotham. So it was decided that Bang should come home as baggage, for they could send the trunk without extra cost. At a junction halfway to New York the hamper containing the unfortunate Bang was dumped out by mistake.
“The vaudeville agent who had rejected the act of Bing and Bang happened to be waiting at that same junction. With him was a young woman, and they both knew that the man’s wife would be very angry if she heard of the expedition. But the vaudeville agent had ‘fixed things’ by sending his wife picture post cards from Pittsburgh, mailed by a faithful chum. So in happy ignorance of their impending fate, they sat on the hamper, talking foolish talk, while Bang was busy taking notes on his cuff and his shirt front, for he recognized the voice of the vaudeville agent. In due time the trunk arrived in New York. Bing and Bang dropped all other business and devoted themselves to watching the agent’s office. The day he arrived they followed him into his private room and told him they haght goes over the works in company with his son and his daughter. It is the nature of things that the son should be enthusiastic over the scientific construction involved and that the daughter should be affected by their destruction of human life promised by the huge engines of war—woman is a creator of beings, man a creator of things.
“The son goes abroad after war and is declared in Europe and sends special envoys from clashing nations to negotiate for control of his father’s output of cannon. These envoys to create laughter are finally successful.”
Summary from Reel Life · 23 October 1915
