The story
“Pansy ran a restaurant, and although she wasn’t exactly a Venus de Milo or a Cleopatra, she was a wizard at baking pies. Because of her talents she was much sought after, but she repulsed the local swains with scorn. She declared that she would only wed a man with experience, who had traveled and knew the world. That is how fortune smiled upon the drummer [salesman—Ed.]. He traveled for a musical supply house, but found it next to impossible to inveigle the farmers of the territory into purchasing cornets and violins. He was nearly at the end of his resources when he struck the little town in which Pansy held sway, and kindly fate led him to her restaurant. It was love at first sight. Something told her that the drummer was in a state of financial stringency, so she showered pies and doughnuts upon him freely. But the local ‘chief of police,’ since he constituted the entire staff, had long admired Pansy from afar. He saw the ingratiating manner in which the drummer devoured the pastry. He saw Pansy’s eyes light up with delight at the flattery the man’s appetite for her cooking gave her (knowing that Pansy’s eyes would never hold the same light for him because he had dyspepsia, and was forbidden pie), and he was jealous.
“That evening the grateful drummer serenaded Pansy, and the jealous ‘Chief’ arrested him on the charge of being a band without a license. The drummer was cast into jail. Day after day she hurled pies and doughnuts through the cell window to her imprisoned fiancé. The drummer thrived and grew fat and happy on Pansy’s diet. Pansy concealed a file in one of her pieces, and one day when the sheriff went into the city on business, leaving the ‘Chief’ to guard the jail, the drummer decided to make use of the instrument and escape. The ‘Chief’ stood under his window, and the prisoner carefully dropped a loaf of bread on his head. The policeman immediately went to sleep. The other prisoners got wind of what the drummer was doing, and swarmed into his cell. The drummer tried to follow them, but Pansy’s pies and doughnuts had made him so plump that he got stuck. The sheriff returned, just as the ‘Chief’ regained his senses, staggered to his feet and remarked, ‘The jail is out.’ He thought the drummer was trying to block the escape of the other men. He rushed inside, secured them as prisoners in his capacity of sheriff, then as president of the town board, ousted the ‘Chief’ and bestowed his helmet and shield upon the drummer. The little town where Pansy dwells now boasts the fattest policeman in the world, and it is Pansy’s great joy to lavish pies and doughnuts on her husband as he patrols his beat.”
Summary from Reel Life · 11 September 1915
