As I write these lines my heart is filled with bitterness and woe. There is a feeling of deep disappointment this morning that has cast my soul down into the very depths of sadness. Some years ago the legislature of Wyoming conceived the stupendous idea that the circus instead of being man's best friend and assistant in his onward march through life, was after all a snare and a delusion.

This august body then passed a law that fixed the licenses of circuses showing in Wyoming Territory at $250, which was of course an embargo on the show business that, as I might say, laid it out colder than a wedge so far as Wyoming Territory was concerned.

The history of that law is a history of repeated injury and usurpation. Our people were bowed down to the earth with the iron heel of an unjust legislature and forced to drag out the weary years without the pleasures which come to other States and other Territories.

In the midst of this overhanging gloom, there were two men who were not afraid of the all powerful legislature, but boldly lifted up their voices and denounced with clarion tone and dauntless eye the great wrong that had been done to our people.

One of these men was a tall, fine-looking man, with piercing eye and noble mein. He stood out at the front in this unequal war and with his silvery hair streaming in the mountain zephyrs, he told the legislature that a justly indignant people would claim at the hands of her law-makers a full and ample retribution for the tyrannical act.

Judge Blair, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming, whether at the social gathering or the quarterly meeting, never lost an opportunity to condemn the unrighteous act or to labor for its abolishment. He fearlessly adjourned court time after time in order that the jury might go to Denver or Salt Lake to attend the circus, and embodied in one of his opinions on the bench the everlasting truth that "the usurpation of the people's prerogatives by the lawmakers of any State or Territory, in so far as to deprive them of a divine right inherent in their very natures, and compelling them to undergo a slavish isolation from the Mammoth Aggregation of Living Wonder? and Colossal Galaxy of Arenic Talent, was unjust in its conception and criminal in its enforcement." See Boggs vs. Boggs, 981. The other dauntless antagonist of the tyrannical law was a young man with pale seldom hair, and a broad open brow that bulged out into space like a sore thumb. He was slender in form like a parallel of longitude, with a nose on him that looked like a thing of life. This young man was myself.

Together we talked in season and out of season, laboring with the law-makers with an energy worthy of a better cause.

We met with scorn and rebuffs on every hand, and the cold, hard world laughed at us, and unfeelingly jeered at our ceaseless attempts. But we labored on till last winter, the welcome telegram was flashed over the wires that the despotic measure was no more.

Then there was a general joy all over the Territory. Judge Blair sang in that impassioned way of his, which makes a confirmed invalid reconciled to death, and I danced.

When I dance there is a wild originality about the gyrations that startles those who are timid, and causes the average, unprotected ballroom-belle to climb up on the platform with the orchestra, where she will be safe.

Bye-and-bye the young man with the step-ladder and the large oil paintings, and the long-handled paste brush came to town, and put some magnificent decalcomania pictures on the bill-boards and fences; and Judge Blair and I patted each other on the back; and laughed seven or eight silvery laughs.

But in the midst of our unfettered glee a telegram came from Denver that the circus that had billed our town had been attached by the sheriffs. It seems that the elephant had broken into a warehouse in Denver and had eaten 160 bales of hay, worth $100 each in the Leadville market. The owner of the hay then attached the show in order to secure pay for the hay.

This necessitated a long delay and finally a sale of the circus. Everything went, the big elephant and the baby elephant, the band chariot with a cross-eyed hyena painted on it, the steam calliope that couldn't play anything but "Silver Threads Among the Gold," the sacred jackass from North Park, the red-nosed babboon from New Jersey, the sore-eyed prairie dog from Jack Creek, the sway-backed grizzly bear from York State, and the second-hand clown from Dubuque, all had to go.

Then they opened a package of petrified jokes and antique conundrums that had been exhumed from the ruins of Pompeii. It seemed almost like sacrilege, but the ruthless auctioneer tore these prehistoric jokes from the sarcophagus and knocked them down to the gaping throng for whatever they would bring.

The show was valued at $2,000,000 on the large illustrated catalogues and bright-hued posters, but after the costs of attachment and sale had been paid there was only $231 left.

Oh! what a sacrifice. How little there is in this brief transitory life of ours that is abiding. How few of our bright hopes are ever realized. How many glad promises are held out to us for the roseate future that never reach fruition.