f Mormon word for word like the foregoing; but the
general tone is not widely different.

There are the makings of a very fine creed about Mormonism. To begin
with, the Church is rather more absolute than that of Rome. Drop the
polygamy plank in the platform, but on the other hand deal lightly with
certain forms of excess. Keep the quality of the recruits down to a low
mental level and see that the best of the agricultural science available
is in the hands of the Elders, and you have there a first-class engine
for pioneer work. The tawdry mysticism and the borrowings from
Freemasonry serve the low-caste Swede and the Dane, the Welshman and the
Cornish cottar, just as well as a highly organised Heaven.

I went about the streets and peeped into people's front windows, and the
decorations upon the tables were after the manner of the year 1850. Main
Street was full of country folk from the outside come in to trade with
the Zion Mercantile Co-operative Institute. The Church, I fancy, looks
after the finances of this thing, and it consequently pays good
dividends. The faces of the women were not lovely. Indeed, but for the
certainty that ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter of
undivided love as the beautiful, it seemed that polygamy was a blessed
institution for the women, and that only the spiritual power could drive
the hulking, board-faced men into it. The women wore hideous garments,
and the men seemed to be tied up with string. They would market all that
afternoon, and on Sunday go to the praying-place. I tried to talk to a
few of them, but they spoke strange tongues and stared and behaved like
cows. Yet one woman, and not an altogether ugly one, confided to me that
she hated the idea of Salt Lake City being turned into a show-place for
the amusement of the Gentile.

"If we 'ave our own institutions, that ain't no reason why people should
come 'ere and stare at us, his it?"

The dropped "h" betrayed her.

"And when did you leave England?" I said.

"Summer of '84. I am from Dorset," she said. "The Mormon agents was very
good to us, and we was very poor. Now we're better off--my father an'
mother an' me."

"Then you like the State?"

She misunderstood at first. "Oh, I ain't livin' in the state of
polygamy. Not me yet. I ain't married. I like where I am. I've got
things o' my own--and some land."

"But I suppose you will--"

"Not me. I ain't like them Swedes an' Danes. I ain't got nothin' to say
fo