ke City amounted to only two days, and therefore we
had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of
polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to
calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.

I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I
was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here--until
I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my
head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely"
creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I
said, "No--the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian
charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their
harsh censure--and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of
open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered
in his presence and worship in silence."

[For a brief sketch of Mormon history, and the noted Mountain Meadow
massacre, see Appendices A and B. ]

CHAPTER XV.

It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories about
assassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of
anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a
Gentile den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton galloped
in among the pleading and defenceless "Morisites" and shot them down, men
and women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying Angel,
shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a debt.
And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing. And how
heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, or
polygamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning at
daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley,
contentedly waiting for the hearse.

And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these
Gentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder,
or a bishop, marries a girl--likes her, marries her sister--likes her,
marries another sister--likes her, takes another--likes her, marries her
mother--likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather,
and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert young
thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerable
grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's