Ragtime Dudes
at the World’s Fair

Their music is Ragtime, their creed is free love, and the St. Louis World’s Fair is once in a lifetime.

In 1904, St. Louis, birthplace of latest music craze, Ragtime, is hosting a must-see World’s Fair. That combination is light to a moth for Julius, Mo and Bryce, three New York City dandies who love Ragtime, free-thinking women, and the newest marvels of a new century.

While making plans to attend the Fair, a newspaper photo of them dallying with a colleen from Brooklyn sets Bird and Finn, a pair of Irish boxers on their trail. The girl’s parents tasked Bird with finding the dandies and bringing one of them to the altar. But years in the ring have left Bird punch-drunk, and it’s up to Finn to do the thinking.

With the pugilists mere days behind them, the men hastily hop a train to St. Louis.

Aboard a Pullman sleeper, the dandies meet Lily, Rose, and Violet Jones, women whose morality seems to match the dandies’ own. Quickly, they pair off in couples for a romantic journey. But as the train nears St. Louis, the sisters reveal they are going to the Fair to meet marriageable, titled European aristocrats, and the New Yorkers will only be in their way.

They arrive for opening day of the largest world’s fair ever held—a dazzling sight. Over the next two weeks, the dandies keep bumping into the sisters; the sisters keep snubbing them; and the pursuing boxers always a step away from catching them.

As the Irishmen close in, the New Yorkers hear of an art colony forming out West, and the idea of opening an emporium in distant New Mexico seems as brilliant as the Fair’s electric lights. The men rush to buy enough goods to start a business and get out of town before the boxers find them.