debate, in
which the senators rather laughed at it as visionary and
unconstitutional, it was referred to the Attorney General for his
opinion. We waited, confidently. To our amazement he reported it
unconstitutional, and the very assistant who had given me a favourable
opinion before, now conducted the case against it. Nothing daunted,
Gardener fought to get it referred to the Supreme Court, under the law;
and the Senate sent it there. I got up an elaborate brief, had it
printed at our expense, and spent a day in arguing it before the
Supreme Court judges. They held that the Court had already twice found
the Legislature possessed of plenary powers in such matters, and
Gardener brought the bill back into the Senate triumphantly, and got a
favourable report from the Judiciary Committee.

By this time, Boss Graham was seriously alarmed. He had warned
Gardener that the bill was distasteful to him and to those whom he
called his "friends." It was particularly distasteful, it seemed, to
the Denver City Tramway Company. And he could promise, he said, that
if we dropped the bill, the railway company would see that we got at
least four thousand dollars' worth of litigation a year to handle. To
both Gardener and myself, flushed with success and roused to the
battle, this offer seemed an amusing confession of defeat on the part
of the opposition; and we went ahead more gaily than ever.

We were enjoying ourselves. If we had been a pair of chums in college,
we could not have had a better time. Whenever I could get away from my
court cases and my office work, I rushed up to watch the fight in the
Senate, as eagerly as a Freshman hurrying from his studies to see his
athletic room-mate carry everything before him in a football game. The
whole atmosphere of the Capitol--with its corridors of coloured marble,
its vistas of arch and pillar, its burnished metal balustrades, its
great staircases--all its majesty of rich grandeur and solidity of
power--affected me with an increased respect for the functions of
government that were discharged there and for the men who had them to
discharge. I felt the reflection of that importance beaming upon
myself when I was introduced as "Senator Gardener's law partner, sir";
and I accepted the bows and greetings of lobbyists and legislators with
all the pleasure in the world.

When Gardener got our bill up for its final reading in the Senate, I
was there to watch, and it tickled me to t