y the commercial Gentile, who has made of it a
busy, bustling thoroughfare, and, in the eye of the sun, swigs the
ungodly lager and smokes the improper cigar all day long. For which I
like him. At the head of Main Street stand the lions of the place; the
Temple and the Tabernacle, the Tithing House, and the houses of Brigham
Young, whose portrait is on sale in most of the booksellers' shops.
Incidentally it may be mentioned that the late Amir of Utah does not
unremotely resemble His Highness the Amir of Afghanistan, whom these
fortunate eyes have seen. And I have no desire to fall into the hands of
the Amir. The first thing to be seen was, of course, the Temple, the
outward exponent of a creed. Armed with a copy of the Book of Mormon,
for better comprehension, I went to form rash opinions. Some day the
Temple will be finished. It was begun only thirty years ago, and up to
date rather more than three million dollars and a half have been
expended in its granite bulk. The walls are ten feet thick; the edifice
itself is about a hundred feet high; and its towers will be nearly two
hundred. And that is all there is of it, unless you choose to inspect
more closely; always reading the Book of Mormon as you walk. Then the
wondrous puerility, of what I suppose we must call the design, becomes
apparent. These men, directly inspired from on High, heaped stone on
stone and pillar on pillar, without achieving either dignity, relief, or
interest. There is, over the main door, some pitiful scratching in stone
representing the all-seeing eye, the Masonic Grip, the sun, moon, and
stars, and, perhaps, other skittles. The flatness and meanness of the
thing almost makes you weep when you look at the magnificent granite in
blocks strewn abroad, and think of the art that three million dollars
might have called in to the aid of the church. It is as though a child
had said: "Let us draw a great, big, fine house--finer than any house
that ever was,"--and in that desire had laboriously smudged along with a
ruler and pencil, piling meaningless straight lines on compass-drawn
curves, with his tongue following every movement of the inept hand. Then
sat I down on a wheelbarrow and read the Book of Mormon, and behold the
spirit of the book was the spirit of the stone before me. The estimable
Joseph and Hyrum Smith struggling to create a new Bible, when they knew
nothing of the history of Old and New Testament, and the inspired
architect muddling with hi