* * * * If such intestate leave a husband or wife, and children, him or her surviving, one-half of such estate shall descend to such surviving husband or wife, and the residue thereof * * * * to the children; if such intestate leave a husband or wife and no child, * * * * then the property shall descend as follows, to wit: three-fourths thereof to such remaining husband or wife, and one-fourth thereof to the father and mother of the intestate, or the survivor of them; provided that if the estate of such intestate, real and personal, does not exceed in volume the sum of ten thousand dollars, then the whole thereof shall descend to and rest in the surviving husband or wife as his or her absolute estate. Dower and the tenancy by the curtesy are abolished.

Sec. 9. In the employment of teachers no discrimination shall be made, in the question of pay, on account of sex, when the persons are equally qualified.

Cheyenne, March 3, 1870.

S. W. Downey—My Dear Sir: I have your favor of yesterday, and have carefully considered the question of the eligibility of women who are "citizens," to serve on juries. Mr. Justice Kingman has also considered the question, and we concur in the opinion that such women are eligible. My reason for this opinion will be given at length, if occasion requires. I will thank you to make it known to those ladies who have been summoned on the juries, that they will be received, protected, and treated with all the respect and courtesy due, and ever paid, by true American gentlemen to true American ladies, and that the Court, in all the power of government, will secure to them all that deference, security from insult, or anything which ought to offend the most refined woman, which is accorded in any walks of life in which the good and true women of our country have heretofore been accustomed to move. Thus, whatever may have been, or may now be thought of the policy of admitting women to the right of suffrage and to hold office, they will have a fair opportunity, at least in my Court, to demonstrate their ability in this new field, and prove the policy or impolicy of occupying it. Of their right to try it I have no doubt. I hope they will succeed, and the Court will certainly aid them in all lawful and proper ways. Very respectfully,

J. H. Howe, Chief-Justice.

It was a real pleasure to me to see ladies in the court-room, with the right to take a responsible part in the proceedings, as grand and petit jurors; that no one knew so well as they did, the evils our community suffered from lawless and wicked people; and no one better understood the difficulties the court labored under in its efforts to administer justice and punish crime; that the time had come when the good women of the territory could give us substantial aid, and we looked to them especially, as the power which should make the court efficient in the discharge of its duties; that the new law had conferred on them important rights, and corresponding duties necessarily devolved upon them; that I hoped and believed they would not shrink when so many influences were calling on them for noble and worthy action; that if they failed us now, the cause of equal rights would suffer at their hands, not only in our territory, but in every land where its advocates were struggling for its recognition; that if they would remain, their presence would secure a degree of decorum in the court-room and add a dignity to the proceedings, which the judges had been unable to command; that we required the assistance of good women all over the territory, and I begged them to help us.

It is an innovation and a great novelty to see, as we do to-day, ladies summoned to serve as jurors. The extension of political rights and franchise to women is a subject that is agitating the whole country. I have never taken an active part in these discussions, but I have long seen that woman is a victim to the vices, crimes and immoralities of man, with no power to protect and defend herself from these evils. I have long felt that such powers of protection should be conferred upon woman, and it has fallen to our lot here to act as the pioneers in the movement and to test the question. The eyes of the whole world are to-day fixed upon this jury of Albany county. There is not the slightest impropriety in any lady occupying this position, and I wish to assure you that the fullest protection of the court shall be accorded to you. It would be a most shameful scandal that in our temple of justice and in our courts of law, anything should be permitted which the most sensitive lady might not hear with propriety and witness. And here let me add that it will be a sorry day for any man who shall so far forget the courtesy due and paid by every American gentleman to every American lady as to ever by word or act endeavor to deter you from the exercise of those rights with which the law has invested you. I conclude with the remark that this is a question for you to decide for yourselves. No man has any right to interfere. It seems to me to be eminently proper for women to sit upon grand juries, which will give them the best possible opportunities to aid in suppressing the dens of infamy which curse the country. I shall be glad of your assistance in the accomplishment of this object. I do not make these remarks from distrust of any of the gentlemen. On the contrary, I am exceedingly pleased and gratified with the indication of intelligence, love of law and good order, and the gentlemanly deportment which I see manifested here.

If any person shall keep open any tippling or gaming-house on the Sabbath day or night, * * * he shall be fined not exceeding one hundred dollars, or imprisoned in the county jail not exceeding six months.

Any person who shall hereafter knowingly disturb the peace and good order of society by labor on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday (works of necessity and charity excepted), shall be fined, on conviction thereof, in any sum not exceeding fifty dollars.

Confusion is becoming worse confounded by the hurried march of events. Mad theorizings take the form of every-day realities, and in the confusion of rights and the confusion of dress, all distinctions of sex are threatened with swift obliteration. When Anna Dickinson holds forth as the teacher of strange doctrines in which the masculinity of woman is preposterously asserted as a true warrant for equality with man in all his political and industrial relations; when Susan B. Anthony flashes defiance from lips and eyes which refuse the blandishment and soft dalliance that in the past have been so potent with "the sex"; when, in fine, the women of Wyoming are called from their domestic firesides to serve as jurors in a court of justice, a question of the day, and one, too, of the strangest kind, is forced on our attention. From a careful review of all the surroundings, we think the Wyoming experiment will lead to beneficial results. By proving that lady jurors are altogether impracticable—that they cannot sit as the peers of men without setting at defiance all the laws of delicacy and propriety—the conclusion may be reached that it will be far better to let nature alone in regulating the relations of the sexes.

Women as Jurors.—Now one of the adjuncts of female citizenship is about to be tested in Wyoming. Eleven women have been drawn as jurors to serve at the March term of the Albany County Court. It is stated that immense excitement has been created thereby, but the nature of the aforesaid excitement does not transpire. Will women revolutionize justice? What is female justice, or what is it likely to be? Would twelve women return the same verdict as twelve men, supposing that each twelve had heard the same case? Is it possible for a jury of women, carrying with them all their sensitiveness, sympathies, predilections, jealousies, prejudices, hatreds, to reach an impartial verdict? Would not every criminal be a monster, provided not a female? Can the sex, ordinarily so quick to pronounce pre-judgments, divest itself of them sufficiently to enter the jury-box with unbiased minds? Perhaps it were best to trust the answer to events. Women may learn to be jurymen, but in so doing they have a great deal to learn.

Cheyenne, Wyoming, April 4, 1870.

Mrs. Myra Bradwell, Chicago, Ill.:

Dear Madam: I am in receipt of your favor of March 26, in which you request me to "give you a truthful statement, over my own signature, for publication in your paper, of the history of, and my observations in regard to, women as grand and petit jurors in Wyoming." I will comply with your request, with this qualification, that it be not published over my own signature, as I do not covet newspaper publicity, and have already, without any agency or fault of my own, been subjected to an amount of it which I never anticipated nor conceived of, and which has been far from agreeable to me.

I had no agency in the enactment of the law in Wyoming conferring legal equality upon women. I found it upon the statute-book of that territory, and in accordance with its provisions several women were legally drawn by the proper officers on the grand and petit juries of Albany county, and were duly summoned by the sheriff without any agency of mine. On being apprised of these facts, I conceived it to be my plain duty to fairly enforce this law, as I would any other; and more than this, I resolved at once that, as it had fallen to my lot to have the experiment tried under my administration, it should have a fair trial, and I therefore assured these women that they could serve or not, as they chose; that if they chose to serve, the Court would secure to them the most respectful consideration and deference, and protect them from insult in word or gesture, and from everything which might offend a modest and virtuous woman in any of the walks of life in which the good and true women of our country have been accustomed to move.

While I had never been an advocate for the law, I felt that thousands of good men and women had been, and that they had a right to see it fairly administered; and I was resolved that it should not be sneered down if I had to employ the whole power of the court to prevent it. I felt that even those who were opposed to the policy of admitting women to the right of suffrage and to hold office would condemn me if I did not do this. It was also sufficient for me that my own judgment approved this course.

With such assurances these women chose to serve and were duly impanelled as jurors. They were educated, cultivated eastern ladies, who are an honor to their sex. They have, with true womanly devotion, left their homes of comfort in the States to share the fortunes of their husbands and brothers in the far West and to aid them in founding a new State beyond the Missouri.

And now as to the results. With all my prejudices against the policy, I am under conscientious obligations to say that these women acquitted themselves with such dignity, decorum, propriety of conduct and intelligence as to win the admiration of every fair-minded citizen of Wyoming. They were careful, pains-taking, intelligent and conscientious. They were firm and resolute for the right as established by the law and the testimony. Their verdicts were right, and, after three or four criminal trials, the lawyers engaged in defending persons accused of crime began to avail themselves of the right of peremptory challenge to get rid of the female jurors, who were too much in favor of enforcing the laws and punishing crime to suit the interests of their clients. After the grand jury had been in session two days, the dance-house keepers, gamblers and demi-monde fled out of the city in dismay, to escape the indictment of women grand jurors! In short I have never, in twenty-five years of constant experience in the courts of the country, seen more faithful, intelligent and resolutely honest grand and petit juries than these.

A contemptibly lying and silly dispatch went over the wires to the effect that during the trial of A. W. Howie for homicide (in which the jury consisted of six women and six men) the men and women were kept locked up together all night for four nights. Only two nights intervened during the trial, and on these nights, by my order, the jury was taken to the parlor of the large, commodious and well-furnished hotel of the Union Pacific Railroad, in charge of the sheriff and a woman bailiff, where they were supplied with meals and every comfort, and at 10 o'clock the women were conducted by the bailiff to a large and suitable apartment where beds were prepared for them, and the men to another adjoining, where beds were prepared for them, and where they remained in charge of sworn officers until morning, when they were again all conducted to the parlor and from thence in a body to breakfast, and thence to the jury-room, which was a clean and comfortable one, carpeted and heated, and furnished with all proper conveniences.

The cause was submitted to the jury for their decision about 11 o'clock in the forenoon, and they agreed upon their verdict, which was received by the court between 11 and 12 o'clock at night of the same day, when they were discharged.

Everybody commended the conduct of this jury and was satisfied with the verdict, except the individual who was convicted of murder in the second degree. The presence of these ladies in court secured the most perfect decorum and propriety of conduct, and the gentlemen of the bar and others vied with each other in their courteous and respectful demeanor toward the ladies and the court. Nothing occurred to offend the most refined lady (if she was a sensible lady) and the universal judgment of every intelligent and fair-minded man present was and is, that the experiment was a success.

I dislike the notoriety this matter has given me, but I do not shrink from it. I never sought it nor expected it, and have only performed what I regarded as a plain duty, neither seeking nor desiring any praise, and quite indifferent to any censure or criticism which my conduct may have invoked.

Thanking you for your friendly and complimentary expressions, I am very respectfully yours,

J. H. Howe.

If we should neglect to give some idea of the results of our jury experiment, the world would say we were afraid or ashamed of it. For our own part we are inclined to admit that it succeeded beyond all our expectations. We naturally wished it to succeed; still we scarcely wished it to demonstrate a theory that women were better qualified for these duties than men. Hence, when Chief-Justice Howe said, "In eighteen years' experience I have never had as fair, candid, impartial and able a jury in court, as in this term in Albany county," and when Associate-Justice Kingman said, "For twenty-five years it has been an anxious study with me, both on the bench and at the bar, how we are to prevent jury trials from degenerating into a perfect burlesque, and it has remained for Albany county to point out the remedy and demonstrate the cure for this threatened evil," we confess to having been more than satisfied with the result. It may be safely stated as the unanimous verdict of bench, bar and public opinion, that the jurors of Albany county did well and faithfully discharge their duties, with honor and credit to themselves and to the satisfaction of the public.