. He was a tall,
dignified man, his hair turning gray--thoughtful, judicial--evidently
a man who was not quick to decide. He led me into his private room, and
sat down with the air of a lawyer who has been asked to take a case and
who wishes first to hear all the details of the action.

I began by describing the Mormon situation as I saw it in those days:
that the Mormons were growing more desperately determined in their
opposition, because they believed their prosecutors were persecuting
them; that the District Attorney and his assistants were harsh to the
point of heartlessness, and that Judge Zane (to us, then) acted like
a religious fanatic in his judicial office; that nearly every Federal
official in Utah had taken a tone of bigoted opposition to the people;
and that the law was detested and the government despised because of the
actions of Federal "carpet-baggers."

I was prejudiced, no doubt, and partisan in my account of the state of
affairs, but I did not exaggerate the facts as I saw them; I believed
what I said.

I did not really reach his sympathy until I spoke of the court system
in Utah--the open venire, the employment of "professional jurors"--the
legal doctrine of "segregation," under which a man might be separately
indicted for every day of his living in plural marriage--and the result
of all this: that the pursuit of defendants and the confiscation of
property had become less an enforcement of law than a profitable legal
industry.

After two hours of argument and examination, I ended with an appeal to
him to accept the opportunity to undertake a merciful assuagement of
our misery. After so many years of failure on the part of the Federal
authorities, he might have the distinction of calling into his court the
Mormon leaders who had been most long and vainly sought by the law;
and by sentencing them to a supportable punishment, he could begin the
composition of a conflict that had gone on for half a century.

He replied with reasons that expressed a kindly unwillingness to
undertake the work. It would mean the sacrifice of his professional
career in New York. He would be putting himself entirely outside the
progression of advancement. His friends, here, would never understand
why he had done it. The affairs of Utah had little interest for them.

I saw that he was not convinced. His wife had been waiting some minutes
in the outer office; he proposed that he should bring her in; and I
gathered from