第24章 VI(2)

By great good luck the evil-minded train,already delayed twelve hours by a burned bridge,brought me to the city on a Saturday by way of that valley which the Mormons,over their efforts,had caused to blossom like the rose.Twelve hours previously I had entered into a new world where,in conversation,every one was either a Mormon or a Gentile.It is not seemly for a free and independent citizen to dub himself a Gentile,but the Mayor of Ogden--which is the Gentile city of the valley--told me that there must be some distinction between the two flocks.

Long before the fruit orchards of Logan or the shining levels of the Salt Lake had been reached,that mayor--himself a Gentile,and one renowned for his dealings with the Mormons--told me that the great question of the existence of the power within the power was being gradually solved by the ballot and by education.

All the beauty of the valley could not make me forget it.And the valley is very fair.Bench after bench of land,flat as a table against the flanks of the ringing hills,marks where the Salt Lake rested for awhile in its collapse from an inland sea to a lake fifty miles long and thirty broad.

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 recruit down to the low mental level,and see that the best of all the agricultural science available is in the hands of the elders,and there you have a first-class engine for pioneer work.

The tawdry mysticism and the borrowing from Freemasonry serve the low caste Swede and Dane,the Welshman and the Cornish cotter,just as well as a highly organized heaven.

Then 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 desert,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.In-deed,but for the certainty that ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter of undivided love as the beautiful,it seems that polygamy was a blessed institution for the women,and that only the dread threats of the spiritual power could drive the hulking,board-faced men into it.The women wore hideous garments,and the men appeared to be tied up with strings.

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 Gentiles.

"If we 'have 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 Dorset,"she said."The Mormon agent 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.Iain'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 for or against polygamy.It's the elders' business,an'between you an'me,I don't think it's going on much longer.You'll 'ear them in the 'ouse to-morrer talkin'as if it was spreadin'all over America.The Swedes,they think it his.I know it hisn't.""But you've got your land all right?"

"Oh,yes;we've got our land,an'we never say aught against polygamy,o'course--father,an'mother,an'me."On a table-land overlooking all the city stands the United States garrison of infantry and artillery.The State of Utah can do nearly anything it pleases until that much-to-be-desired hour when the Gentile vote shall quietly swamp out Mormonism;but the garrison is kept there in case of accidents.The big,shark-mouthed,pig-eared,heavy-boned farmers sometimes take to their creed with wildest fanaticism,and in past years have made life excessively unpleasant for the Gentile when he was few in the land.But to-day,so far from killing openly or secretly,or burning Gentile farms,it is all the Mormon dare do to feebly try to boycott the interloper.His journals preach defiance to the United States Government,and in the Tabernacle on a Sunday the preachers follow suit.

When I went there,the place was full of people who would have been much better for a washing.

A man rose up and told them that they were the chosen of God,the elect of Israel;that they were to obey their priests,and that there was a good time coming.I fancy that they had heard all this before so many times it produced no impression whatever,even as the sublimest mysteries of another faith lose salt through constant iteration.They breathed heavily through their noses,and stared straight in front of them--impassive as flat fish.