single, each
was safe to be made the wife of one of these favoured prophets the
instant she set foot in the new city. This, of course, was a very grand
thing for the women--as you may know if you have any experience of
them--especially for those who were getting on the shady side of forty,
and had not changed their name. They, the women, gathered together and
pressed into Peckaby's shop, and stared at Brother Jarrum with eager
eyes, and listened with strained ears, only looking off him to cast
admiring glances one to another.

"Stars and snakes!" said Brother Jarrum, whose style of oratory was more
peculiar than elegant, "what flounders me is, that the whole lot of you
Britishers don't migrate of yourselves to the desired city--the promised
land--the Zion on the mountains. You stop here to pinch and toil and
care, and quarrel one of another, and starve your children through
having nothing to give 'em, when you might go out there to ease, to
love, to peace, to plenty. It's a charming city; what else should it be
called the City of the Saints for? The houses have shady veranders round
'em, with sweet shrubs a-creeping up, and white posts and pillows to
lean against. The bigger a household is, the more rooms it have got; not
a lady there, if there was a hundred of 'em in family, but what's got
her own parlour and bedroom to herself, which no stranger thinks of
going in at without knocking for leaf. All round and about these houses
is productive gardens, trees and flowers for ornament, and fruits and
green stuff to eat. There's trees that they call cotton wood, and firs,
and locusts, and balsams, and poplars, and pines, and acacias, some of
'em in blossom. A family may live for nothing upon the produce of their
own ground. Vegetables is to be had for the cutting; their own cows
gives the milk--such milk and butter as this poor place, Deerham, never
saw--but the rich flavour's imparted to 'em from the fine quality of the
grass; and fruit you might feed upon till you got a surfeit. Grapes and
peaches is all a-hanging in clusters to the hand, only waiting to be
plucked! Stars! my mouth's watering now at the thoughts of 'em! I--"

"Please, sir, what did you say the name of the place was again?"
interrupted a female voice.

"New Jerusalem," replied Brother Jarrum. "It's in the territory of Utah.
On the maps and on the roads, and for them that have not awoke to the
new light, it's called the Great Salt Lake City; but for us fa