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 her hull property and her heart's blood. How mothers are importuned by male statesmen to bring big families into a world full of temptation and ruin, but have no legal rights to protect them from the black dangers licensed by these law-makers. His face looked so queer, I worried some thinkin' I should git him to cryin' instead of laughin'; but I hurried and told him how our statesmen would flare up now and then and turribly threaten the Mormon who keeps on marryin' some new wives every little while, and then elect him to Congress, and sculp his head on our warship to show foreign nations that America approves of such doin's. And I told him how girls and boys, hardly out of pantalettes and knee breeches, could git married in five minutes, but have to spend months and money to break the ties so easily made and prove they are morally fit to care for the children born of that careless five minute ceremony.