A traveling man representing a St. Joe furniture house, visited Marshall recently, who proved to be a gentleman who had seen a great deal of the world and felt that he was much traveled. Notwithstanding the fact, that he, in his various trips, in which he had girdied the earth, had hunted the green mountain lion, the bengal tiger, etc., yet he, with some modesty, declared he had never been on a snipe hunt. Several of the young men of Marshall, who be it said to their credit are never lacking in courtesy, proposed a snipe hunt for Friday night, when they would introduce their up-to-date friend into the mysteries of hunting this much talked of bird.
    Promptly at ten o’clock Friday night they started for Salt Fork, with all the needed paraphernalia for the trip. It being dark with a cold rain falling, made an ideal night for snipe. When eleven o’clock came the young man had been thoroughly drilled in all the mysteries necessary to secure success, and they left him alone on the other side of Salt Fork, where standing between two lighted lanterns he held the sack in the most approved fashion. The lanterns made things cheery for him in the silence of the night, giving him a fine opportunity of meditating upon the blessed fact that he could from this on add snipe hunting to his repertoire of gentlemanly sports and accomplishments.
    After holding the sack for three hours or more in a pouring rain, he wisely decided that it must be a bad night for snipe and started for town. Not knowing the way he labored under a great disadvantage, but about this time he gladly spied an approaching vehicle coming up the road and screamed manfully for assistance. The man in the rig seemed as deaf to his desires as did the Saline county Snipe, who never made their appearance.
    This up-to-date man, failing to find the bridge, actually walked through water knee deep and arrived at Ming’s Hotel at three o’clock in the morning, where he found the Marshall boys had strived some time ahead of him and were ready to receive the sack and to agree with him that it was indeed a bad night for snipe.

From— The Marshall Republican. (Marshall, Saline County, Mo.), 17 May 1901. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.