of the faces gathered there.

Prayer has always played an important part in both secular as well as
religious assemblages, used as a means to impress and overawe these
superstitious disciples of an all absorbing faith. Every ball, every
party, all social gatherings and even the theatre in the olden time,
opened and closed with prayer. In the dedication of a building they
bless the different parts even to shingles and nails. A full hour was
consumed when the large tabernacle was dedicated, in enumerating and
blessing the different materials that made up its construction. One
other very peculiar tenet of the church is baptism for the dead. They
are women principally who enter with enthusiasm in practising this rite,
and they have been immersed as many as twenty times in one day to insure
the future of departed friends. It was the boast of one poor simple
Scotch woman that she had secured places in Heaven for Sir William
Wallace and Robert Bruce. In accordance with a purpose of the
priesthood, children bore a prominent part in public affairs. They were
called Utah's best crop--and less than ten years ago--they formed
conspicuous portions of the audiences that gathered in the tabernacle
and theatre. Their youthful voices in concert rivalled those of the
tabernacle choir, the latter no mean institution as it numbered over
300. At the theatre, too young to hold up their heads, their mothers
tended them on pillows. This custom has gradually been abolished until
now an apostle can harangue by the hour on his favorite topic of "come
up and pay your tithing without an infant's cry to interrupt the
monotonus strain."

This theocratic government, where one man calls himself God's vicegerent
and imposes his revelations on a narrow minded fanatical class of men,
carries its own hand into all its branches, nothing being too small or
petty for its fingers to grasp, and implicit obedience is to-day, as it
always has been, the watch-word of the church. At church conferences
there is never a dissenting voice and at the polls always the same
unanimous vote. The following quotations give an idea of how the power
is placed in Utah and of what theocracy consists:--Brigham Young said
in the Tabernacle in 1869, "what is the greatest miracle that can be
wrought before God, our Saviour, the angels, the inhabitants of the
earth and the infernal regions? Is it raising the dead or healing the
sick? No--it is not--it is bringing a people to strict