nd others I spent
in walking. Though I went early to bed I slept so late that the ritual
was well advanced when I reached the Mormon gathering. From where I was
obliged to stand I could only hear the preacher, already in the middle
of his discourse.

"Don't empty your swill in the door-yard, but feed it to your hogs," he
was saying; and any one who knows how plainly a man is revealed in his
voice could have felt instantly, as I did, that here was undoubtedly a
leader of men. "Rotten meat, rotten corn, spoiled milk, the truck that
thoughtless folks throw away, should be used. Their usefulness has not
ceased because they're rotten. That's the error of the ignorant, who
know not that nothing is meant to be wasted in this world. The ignorant
stay poor because they break the law of the Lord. Waste not, want not.
The children of the Gentiles play in the door-yard and grow sickly and
die. The mother working in the house has a pale face and poison in her
blood. She cannot be a strong wife. She cannot bear strong sons to the
man. He stays healthy because he toils in the field. He does not breathe
the tainted air rising from the swill in the door-yard. Swill is bad for
us, but it is good for swine. Waste it by the threshold it becomes
deadly, and a curse falls upon the house. The mother and children are
sick because she has broken a law of the Lord. Do not let me see this
sin when I come among you in the valley. Fifty yards behind each house,
with clean air between, let me see the well-fed swine receiving each
day, as was intended, the garbage left by man. And let me see flowers in
the door-yard, and stout, blooming children. We will sing the
twenty-ninth hymn."

The scales had many hours ago dropped from my eyes, and I saw Arizona
clear, and felt no repining for roses and jasmine. They had been a
politician's way of foisting one more silver State upon our Senate, and
I willingly renounced them for the real thing I was getting; for my
holiday already far outspangled the motliest dream that ever visited me,
and I settled down to it as we settle down in our theatre chairs, well
pleased with the flying pantomime. And when, after the hymn and a
blessing--the hymn was poor stuff about wanting to be a Mormon and with
the Mormons stand--I saw the Bishop get into a wagon, put on a yellow
duster, and drive quickly away, no surprise struck me at all. I merely
said to myself: Certainly. How dull not to have foreseen that! And I
knew that