[THE WATERS OF LA CROSSE.]
We have heretofore entirely overlooked the magnetic qualities of the La Crosse water. It will be remembered that the Fond du Lac water is advertised as magnetic water, and it has been said that a knife blade, after being soaked in the water will take up a watch key or a steel pen. That is nothing compared to the La Crosse water. Last week a man who had been soaked in La Crosse water, took up a watch, key and all, and a policeman who had been using the water took up the man, with the watch. A pair of ice tongs, made of steel, on being soaked in water, took up a piece of ice weighing over a hundred pounds, and a farmer named Dawson, after drinking the water took up a stray colt. A young couple stopped the other evening and took a drink of water and up Fourth street, and before they got to Seymour’s corner they were walking so close together that you couldn’t tell which the bustle was on. We have never seen water that had so much magnetism in as this. A pot of it on a house is better than a lightning rod.
[SARDINEINDIANAPOLIS.]
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.
“SARD.” AND THE GREEK SLAVE.