ywhere through the broad, straight, level
streets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of a city of fifteen
thousand inhabitants with no loafers perceptible in it; and no visible
drunkards or noisy people; a limpid stream rippling and dancing through
every street in place of a filthy gutter; block after block of trim
dwellings, built of "frame" and sunburned brick--a great thriving orchard
and garden behind every one of them, apparently--branches from the street
stream winding and sparkling among the garden beds and fruit trees--and a
grand general air of neatness, repair, thrift and comfort, around and
about and over the whole. And everywhere were workshops, factories, and
all manner of industries; and intent faces and busy hands were to be seen
wherever one looked; and in one's ears was the ceaseless clink of
hammers, the buzz of trade and the contented hum of drums and fly-wheels.

The armorial crest of my own State consisted of two dissolute bears
holding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them and making the
pertinent remark, "UNITED, WE STAND--(hic!)--DIVIDED, WE FALL." It was
always too figurative for the author of this book. But the Mormon crest
was easy. And it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted like a glove.
It was a representation of a GOLDEN BEEHIVE, with the bees all at work!

The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the State of
Connecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under a curving wall
of mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the clouds, and whose
shoulders bear relics of the snows of winter all the summer long.

Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles off, Great
Salt Lake City is toned down and diminished till it is suggestive of a
child's toy-village reposing under the majestic protection of the Chinese
wall.

On some of those mountains, to the southwest, it had been raining every
day for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the city. And on hot
days in late spring and early autumn the citizens could quit fanning and
growling and go out and cool off by looking at the luxury of a glorious
snow-storm going on in the mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance,
at those seasons, every day, though no snow would fall in their streets,
or anywhere near them.

Salt Lake City was healthy--an extremely healthy city.

They declared there was only one physician in the place and he was
arrested every week regularly and held to answer