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