e short, fat, plump, but mighty
small, so small that she didn't look as though she was big enough for a
cork to a jug. But she could dance. Well, she ought to, as she had no
clothes to bother her. Next came a brunette, evidently of French
extraction, with a face that was a protection against assault with intent
to kill, and legs of the Gothic style. Smith said she was spavined, but
that's a lie. She danced better than all of them, and walked on her big
toes till the audience yelled. Then the dancers all got tangled up
together, the brunette fell over on the little blonde, stuck her hind foot
right in the air as straight as a liberty pole struck by lightning,
somebody said "Tableau," and the curtain went down, and the audience
looked at each other as much as to say, "Let's go home." The boys in the
gallery cheered, and the curtain was rung up again, but her flag was still
there. Then they had a fighting scene, where everybody gets mad and goes
out into the dressing room and clashes old swords together, and come back
wounded. The king, after killing up a lot ahead, got a furlough and came
in and lallygaged with the Greek slave a spell, and then the battle was
lost, and "Sardine." said he might as well die for an old sheep as a lamb.
So he ordered a funeral pile built of red fire, and he got on it to be
burned up. The Greek slave said if that was the game she wanted a hand
dealt to her, as wherever "Sard." went she was going, as she had
an insurance policy against fire in the Northwestern Mutual. So he invited
her on to the kindling wood, and after hugging enough to last them through
perdition--and mighty good hugging it was too--the pile of slabs was
touched off, the flames rolled, and "Sard." and the Greek slave went down
to hell clasped in each other's embrace, and we went to the People's store
and bought a mackerel and went home and told our wife we had been to a
democratic caucus. We don't know what all the other fellows told their
wives, but there has been a heap of lying, we know that much.

[Illustration: "SARD." AND THE GREEK SLAVE.]

INSECURE ABODES.

Four men fell out of the Oshkosh jail the other day. If Oshkosh would only
imitate Fond du lac, and paper the county jail with wall paper, it might
become safe.

THE KNIGHT AND THE BRIDAL CHAMBER.

There was one of those things occurred at a Chicago hotel during the
conclave that is so near a fight and yet so ridiculously laughable that
you don't know wheth