Madison Times

A Skeleton in Armor. The Sight That Paralyzed the Passengers of a Steamship. N. Y. Journal.

A passenger on the just arrived steamer from Australia says that on the second day out from Melbourne the passengers were amazed to behold a little swarthy-faced, black-eyed man emerge from his stateroom in a full jockey costume—boots, whip, spurs, silk jacket and all. In this attire he solemnly paced up and down the deck for an hour and then disappeared.

The next morning the same party appeared attired in the half armor of a knight of the Middle Ages, and the same afternoon emerged in a gorgeous Cardinal's dress and continued his dignified promenade without speaking a word to any one.

The fact that all these costumes were a world too large for the wearer made this masquerading the more grotesque, and the passengers watched each transformation with increased merriment until it was suddenly whispered around that the fellow was a maniac who imagined himself going to a perpetual series of masked balls and that any opposition to his delusion would provoke him to fury.

The strange passenger rattled the nerves of the company very much the next morning by appearing as a Bedouin Arab, armed with a cruel-looking scimitar, but when shortly after dinner he showed up as a Piute Indian, carrying a blood-curdling tomahawk and scalping knife, the women and children locked themselves in their staterooms, while a committee of men hunted up the captain and filed an indignant protest against allowing the maniac to remain at large.

"Maniac be blowed!" growled the sailor. "Don't you know that Davidson the actor, is on board?"

"Why, that's his body servant. He is simply airing his master's wardrobe to keep it from molding."

And the committee "set 'em up."