Many years ago, when Wyoming was new and infested with the bear, the bunko-steerer, the buffalo and the bold, bad man, a little circumstance occurred there which is worthy of notice; and as it has never appeared in the newspapers, I give it as near as my memory will serve me in the narrative.

When Wyoming was a wilderness, and before the civilizing influence of the legislature and Pattee's lottery had toned down the rough outlines of the young commonwealth, there lived over on Horse Creek a ranchman whom we will call Henry Ward Beecher, as a kind of nom de corral as it were.

Henry Ward Beecher was a bachelor, and lived by himself. He did not know the loving influences and gentle yearnfulness of woman's society. His life was a howling wilderness, a wide waste of loneliness and wretchedness, because he was unmated.

Henry Ward Beecher did not know the pleasure of rising in the night and tangling his feet up in a corset lying on the floor, or of brushing his bald head in the morning with a hair brush so full of long, silky hairs that they would wind around his nose and tickle his bald head till he would wish he was dead. He was alone amid the solitude of the mountains, with no companion but a low grade, refractory mule and a flea-bitten, ecru-colored, mongrel dog, with one eye knocked out.

Henry thought, as year succeeded year, that he would make a change, and throw more joy into his humble life m some way or another, but he was making money, and kept busy all the time, so that he neglected it.

Finally one day in spring there came to the Ranche de Henry Ward Beecher a man from Ohio, named Obejoyful Jenkins. He had come west hoping to get a situation as president of a bank on the strength of being an Ohio man; but most all the banks seemed to have all the presidents they needed, so that Obejoyful concluded to compromise the matter, and herd sheep at twenty-five dollars per month and board. He struck Henry Ward Beecher and made a trade with him.