rine wuz the true belief, that
it wuz writ in heaven, then it wuz engraved on plates, and dug up by
Joe Smith, a Latter Day Saint.

Sez I, "If anybody trys to prove sunthin' they want to, they can most
always dig up sunthin' to prove it. You say a man dug this plate up;
what if some woman should go to diggin' and find a plate provin' that
one woman ort to have 'leven husbands?"

"Oh, no!" sez the man in deep scorn, "no such plate could be found!"

The wimmen all looked as if they would kinder like to see such dishes,
but they all sez faintly, "We don't spoze that it could be found."

"But," I sez, "you don't know how many plates there are in the ground,
nor who'll dig 'em up."

"Oh, that idee is preposterous!" sez the man, as visions of dividin'
one woman's heart into eleven parts and reignin' over that little
mossel riz up before him. "Men never would agree to that; there would
be mutiny, internal bloodshed and sizm."

"Well," sez I, "mebby there is more or less internal heart bleedin'
goin' on in the wimmen's hearts that have to divide a man's love and
care a dozen times." Sez I, "A hull man's hull affections are onstiddy
and wobblin' and oncertain enough without dividin' it up so many
times."

Them wimmen wuz touched. I see a answerin' gleam of understandin' come
into about twenty-one eyes as I spoke; one on 'em stood firm and
looked hauty and cast iron, but I mistrusted it wuz a glass eye, but
don't know, it might have been principle.

And even on the man's small-sized countenance my words had seemed to
make a impression. But yet he didn't want to give up in a minute; he
spoke of how the Mormons had flourished since they come to Utah, how
they had turned the desert into a garden, and he felt that the Lord
must look on 'em favorable or they wouldn't be so prosperous.

"Yes," sez I, not wantin' to lie, "your country is beautiful, it is in
a flourishing state, and shows the good results of systematic labor,
industry and ambition; you have made the desert bloom like the rosy,
many of your ways and customs might be follered with profit by older
communities, and more orthodox accordin' to my idees. But I don't know
as your flourishin' in worldly affairs is any sign of God's favor,"
and I mentioned the scripter concernin' who it wuz that flourished
like the green bayberry tree. So bein' driv out of that argument, he
sez, forgittin' his own eleven proofs aginst his story bein' true:

"Polygamy is done away with