along the
sidewalks--elms, poplars, maples, and a few catalpas and hawthorns; yet
they are mostly small and irregular, and nowhere form avenues half so
leafy and imposing as one would be led to expect. Even in the business
streets there is but little regularity in the buildings--now a row
of plain adobe structures, half store, half dwelling, then a high
mercantile block of red brick or sandstone, and again a row of adobe
cottages nestled back among apple trees. There is one immense store with
its sign upon the roof, in letters big enough to be read miles away,
"Z.C.M.I." (Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution), while many a
small, codfishy corner grocery bears the legend "Holiness to the Lord,
Z.C.M.I." But little evidence will you find in this Zion, with its
fifteen thousand souls, of great wealth, though many a Saint is seeking
it as keenly as any Yankee Gentile. But on the other hand, searching
throughout all the city, you will not find any trace of squalor or
extreme poverty.

Most of the women I have chanced to meet, especially those from the
country, have a weary, repressed look, as if for the sake of their
religion they were patiently carrying burdens heavier than they were
well able to bear. But, strange as it must seem to Gentiles, the
many wives of one man, instead of being repelled from one another by
jealousy, appear to be drawn all the closer together, as if the real
marriage existed between the wives only. Groups of half a dozen or so
may frequently be seen on the streets in close conversation, looking
as innocent and unspeculative as a lot of heifers, while the masculine
Saints pass them by as if they belonged to a distinct species. In the
Tabernacle last Sunday, one of the elders of the church, in discoursing
upon the good things of life, the possessions of Latter-Day Saints,
enumerated fruitful fields, horses, cows, wives, and implements, the
wives being placed as above, between the cows and implements, without
receiving any superior emphasis.

Polygamy, as far as I have observed, exerts a more degrading influence
upon husbands that upon wives. The love of the latter finds expression
in flowers and children, while the former seem to be rendered incapable
of pure love of anything. The spirit of Mormonism is intensely exclusive
and un-American. A more withdrawn, compact, sealed-up body of people
could hardly be found on the face of the earth than is gathered here,
notwithstanding railroads, telegra