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 whether you are on foot or a horseback.  Of course some of the Knights in attendance were from the backwoods, and while they were well up in all the secret workings of the order, they were awful “new” in regard to city ways.

There was one Sir Knight from the Wisconsin pineries, who had never been to a large town before, and his freshness was the subject of remark.  He was a large-hearted gentleman, and a friend that any person might be proud to have.  But he was fresh.  He went to the Palmer House Tuesday night, after the big ball, tired nearly to death, and registered his name and called for a bed.

The clerk told him that he might have to sleep on a red lounge, in a room with two other parties, but that was the best that could be done.  He said that was all right, he “had tried to sleep on one of them cots down to camp, but it nearly broke his back,” and he would be mighty glad to strike a lounge.  The clerk called a bell boy and said, “Show the gentleman to 253.”

The boy took the Knight’s keister and went to the elevator, the door opened and the Knight went in and began to pull off his coat, when he looked around and saw a woman on the plush upholstered seat of the elevator, leaning against the wall with her head on her hand.  She was dressed in ball costume, with one of those white Oxford tie dresses cut low in the instep, which looked, in the mussed and bedraggled condition in which she had escaped from the exposition ball, very much to the Knight like a Knight shirt.  The astonished pinery man stopped pulling off his coat and turned pale.  He looked at the woman, then at the elevator boy, whom he supposed was the bridegroom, and said: