ist, gamblin' and wastin'
good daylight in civilized sports, when you might be hangin' from tree
tops, and chasin' each other 'round stumps, in a honest, oncivilized
way. If you don't look out your ladies will foller the example of the
Four Hundred and be thinkin' of a divorce and big alimony next."

He looked impressed by my noble anxiety on their behaff, but didn't
say nothin'. But mebby he'll hear to me. A little boy standin' by sez,
"Ma, Jimmy Bates sez that he and I and everybody descended from
monkeys--did I, ma?"

"I don't know," sez she, "I never knew much about your father's
family."

I didn't stay long at the Open Air Circus, though it wuz a big place
and sights goin' on there; bare-backed riders, Japanese jugglers and
acrobats, tight-rope walkers, elephants and camels with folks on their
backs, with Arabians and East Indians in their native costumes takin'
care of 'em.

Not fur off I see a male statute; lots of folks wuz congregated in
front of it, and I went up too, and I sez to a female bystander, "I
always did love to see statutes. But this one's linement is humblier
than most on 'em."

When if you'll believe it it turned round and sez, "Thank you, mom,
for the compliment." It acted mad.

Another man stood like a statute, and the woman I had spoke to sez,
"You can git a dollar if you can make that man laugh."

And I sez, "I can."

Sez she, "I don't believe it; I've read to him lots of the humorous
stories in the late magazines, and he looked fairly gloomy when I got
done."

And I sez, "I don't wonder at that, I do myself. They're awful
deprestin'."

And she sez, "I've held up in front of him the funny colored
supplements to the Sunday papers, and I thought he'd cry."

"Well," sez I, "I've pretty nigh shed tears over 'em myself, they made
me so onhappy."

"How be you goin' to make him laugh?" sez she.

"You watch me and see," sez I. So I went up to him and got his eye and
told him over a lot of laws our male statesmen have made, and are
makin'. License laws of different kinds, but all black as a coal. How
a little girl of twelve or fourteen, pronounced legally incapable of
buyin' or sellin' a sheep or a hen, can legally sell her virtue and
ruin her life. How pizen is licensed by law to make men break the law,
and then they are punished and hung by the law for doin' what the law
expected they would do.

How a woman can protect her dog by payin' a dollar, but can't protect
her boy with he