as positively, that the Mormons were almost if not wholly and
completely responsible for that most treacherous and pitiless butchery.
We got the story in all these different shapes, but it was not till
several years afterward that Mrs. Waite's book, "The Mormon Prophet,"
came out with Judge Cradlebaugh's trial of the accused parties in it and
revealed the truth that the latter version was the correct one and that
the Mormons were the assassins. All our "information" had three sides to
it, and so I gave up the idea that I could settle the "Mormon question"
in two days. Still I have seen newspaper correspondents do it in one.

I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things
existed there--and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether a
state of things existed there at all or not. But presently I remembered
with a lightening sense of relief that we had learned two or three
trivial things there which we could be certain of; and so the two days
were not wholly lost. For instance, we had learned that we were at last
in a pioneer land, in absolute and tangible reality.

The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high freights and
bewildering distances of freightage. In the east, in those days, the
smallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it represented the smallest
purchasable quantity of any commodity. West of Cincinnati the smallest
coin in use was the silver five-cent piece and no smaller quantity of an
article could be bought than "five cents' worth." In Overland City the
lowest coin appeared to be the ten-cent piece; but in Salt Lake there did
not seem to be any money in circulation smaller than a quarter, or any
smaller quantity purchasable of any commodity than twenty-five cents'
worth. We had always been used to half dimes and "five cents' worth" as
the minimum of financial negotiations; but in Salt Lake if one wanted a
cigar, it was a quarter; if he wanted a chalk pipe, it was a quarter; if
he wanted a peach, or a candle, or a newspaper, or a shave, or a little
Gentile whiskey to rub on his corns to arrest indigestion and keep him
from having the toothache, twenty-five cents was the price, every time.
When we looked at the shot-bag of silver, now and then, we seemed to be
wasting our substance in riotous living, but if we referred to the
expense account we could see that we had not been doing anything of the
kind.

But people easily get reconciled to big money an