In company with a couple of hundred others who were firm in the belief
that the Sardinapalus troupe were under the auspices of the Young Men's
Christian Association, we attended the performance on Monday evening. It
was heralded as coming from Booth's theater, N.Y., where it had a run of
four months. Most of them got away while on the trip here, and only a few
appeared. The scenery, which was also extensively advertised, was no more
than could have been fixed up with a whitewash brush in half a day, by
home talent. The play, what there was of it was well rendered, though many
doubted the propriety of the king calling around him a lot of La Crosse
soldiers, to hear him tell the Greek slave how he loved her. There was
much dissatisfaction about the Greek slave. All marble statues of the
Greek slave represent her with nothing on but a trace chain around one arm
and one leg. But the party who got up this play went behind the returns
and invested her with a white night gown, which detracted very much from
history. The "soldiers" were picked up among the La Crosse boys, and they
got tangled up, and couldn't form a line to save themselves, and when they
stood against the wall it was a melancholy fact that they tickled the
ballet girls in the ribs as they passed by. This was highly wrong. It
takes the romance out of the affair to gaze upon an Assyrian soldier,
covered with armor, and carrying a cover to a wash boiler in his hand, and
to think that he is covered with scars won in battle, and then look at him
through a glass and have him wink at you, and you find that you have seen
him thousands of times standing on the postoffice corner, spitting tobacco
juice across the sidewalk at the hydrant. Mrs. Sardinapalus did not
appear, having gone to visit her uncle, but "Sard." stuck to the Greek
slave like a sand burr to a boy's trousers. They laid down
together on a bale of paper rags and looked at the dance. The dance was
pretty good. First there came out about a dozen girls in tights, with
skirts as short as pie crust. Their legs were all round and well got up,
showing that the sawdust was evenly distributed, with no chance for
dissatisfaction. They capered around, and smiled at the reflection of the
red lights in the gallery upon the bald heads before them, and kicked up
like all possessed, and then they backed up against the wings and fooled
with the La Cross Assyrians, who came down like a wolf on the fold. Then
there came out two first-class dancers, one 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.]