your wife--say that I was an
imposter--that I was trying to foist my boy on the estate of a dead
man--in the name of God, then what could I do?' He went away; and he
hasn't come back; and he hasn't written. I don't know who married us. I
don't even know the house where it happened. I don't know who the driver
was. I don't even know who the apostle was that told mother it would be
all right. He made her promise under a covenant not to tell.

"I don't know where to go. A friend of mine told me you would advise me.
He said perhaps you could make them give me a certificate. I don't want
to expose my husband. I only want something so that my boy, when he
grows up, won't be"--

What could I do? What could anyone do for this unfortunate girl, seduced
in the name of religion, with the aid of a Church that repudiated her
for its own protection? She had to suffer, and see her boy suffer, the
penalties of a social outcast.

Her case was typical of many that came to my personal knowledge. At
the Sunday Schools, in the choirs, in the joint meetings of mutual
improvement associations, young girls--taught to believe that plural
marriage was sacred, and reverencing the polygamous prophets as the
anointed of the Lord--were being seduced into clandestine marriage
relations with polygamous elders who persuaded their victims that the
anti-polygamous manifesto had been given out to save a persecuted people
from the cruelties of an unjust government; that it was never intended
it should be obeyed; that all the celestial blessings promised by
revelation to the polygamist and his wives were still waiting for those
who would dare to enjoy them.

If the tempted girl turned to one of her women friends, and besought
her to say, on her honor, whether she thought that plural marriage was
right, the other was likely enough to answer: "Yes, yes. Indeed it is.
Promise me you won't tell a living soul. Tell me you'll die first....
I'm married to Brother I,----, the leader of the ward choir."

If she asked her mother: "Tell me. Is plural marriage wrong?" the mother
could only reply: "Oh--I don't know--I don't know. Your father said it
was right, and I accepted it--and we practiced it--and you have always
loved your other brothers and sisters, and it seems to me it can't be
wrong, since we have lived it. But--Oh, I don't know, daughter. I don't
know."

The man who is tempting her knows. He has the word of an apostle, the
example of the Prophet, the