An overland journey in winter is a better thing to have done than to do.In the spring, however, when the grass is green on the great prairies, I fancy one might make the journey a pleasant one, with his own outfit and a few choice friends.
4.17.VERY MUCH MARRIED.
Are the Mormon women happy?
I give it up.I don't know.
It is at Great Salt Lake City as it is at Boston.If I go out to tea at the Wilkinses in Boston, I'm pretty sure to find Mr.Wilkins all smiles and Sunshine, or Mrs.Wilkins all gentleness and politeness.I am entertained delightfully, and after tea little Miss Wilkins shows me her photograph album, and plays the march from "Faust" on the piano for me.I go away highly pleased with my visit; and yet the Wilkinses may fight like cats and dogs in private.I may no sooner have struck the sidewalk than Mr.W.will be reaching for Mrs.W's throat.
This is the City of Saints.Apparently, the Mormon women are happy.I saw them at their best, of course--at balls, tea-parties and the like.They were like other women as far as my observation extended.They were hooped, and furbelowed, and shod, and white-collard, and bejewelled; and like women all over the world, they were softer-eyed and kinder-hearted than men can ever hope to be.
The Mormon girl is reared to believe that the plurality-wife system as it is delicately called here is strictly right; and in linking her destiny with a man who has twelve wives, she undoubtedly considers she is doing her duty.She loves the man, probably, for I think it is not true, as so many writers have stated, that girls are forced to marry whomsoever "the Church" may dictate.Some parents no doubt advise, connive, threaten, and in aggravated cases incarcerate here, as some parents have always done elsewhere, and always will do as long as petticoats continue to be an institution.
How these dozen or twenty wives get along without heart-burnings and hairpullings I can't see.
There are instances on record, you know, where a man don't live in a state of uninterrupted bliss with ONE wife.And to say that a man can possess twenty wives without having his special favorite, or favorites, is to say that he is an angel in boots--which is something I have never been introduced to.You never saw an angel with a Beard, although you may have seen the Bearded Woman.
The Mormon woman is early taught that man, being created in the image of the Saviour, is far more godly than she can ever be, and that for her to seek to monopolize his affections is a species of rank sin.So she shares his affections with five or six or twenty other women, as the case may be.
A man must be amply able to support a number of wives before he can take them.Hence, perhaps, it is that so many old chaps in Utah have young and blooming wives in their seraglios, and so many young men have only one.
I had a man pointed out to me who married an entire family.He had originally intended to marry Jane, but Jane did not want to leave her widowed mother.The other three sisters were not in the matrimonial market for the same reason; so this gallant man married the whole crowd, including the girl's grandmother, who had lost all her teeth, and had to be fed with a spoon.The family were in indigent circumstances, and they could not but congratulate themselves on securing a wealthy husband.It seemed to affect the grandmother deeply, for the first words she said on reaching her new home were: "Now, thank God! I shall have my gruel reg'lar!"The name of Joseph Smith is worshipped in Utah; and, "they say,"that although he had been dead a good many years, he still keeps on marrying women by proxy.He "reveals" who shall act as his earthly agent in this matter, and the agent faithfully executes the defunct Prophet's commands.
A few years ago I read about a couple being married by telegraph--the young man was in Cincinatti and the young woman was in New Hampshire.They did not see each other for a year afterwards.Idon't see what fun there is in this sort of thing.
I have somewhere stated that Brigham Young is said to have eighty wives.I hardly think he has so many.Mr.Hyde, the backslider, says in his book that "Brigham always sleeps by himself, in a little chamber behind his office;" and if he has eighty wives Idon't blame him.He must be bewildered.I know very well that if I had eighty wives of my bosom I should be confused, and shouldn't sleep anywhere.I undertook to count the long stockings, on the clothes-line, in his back yard one day, and I used up the multiplication table in less than half an hour.It made me dizzy--it did!
In this book I am writing chiefly of what I saw.I saw plurality at its best.I have shown the silver lining of this great social cloud.That back of this silver lining the cloud must be thick and black, I feel quite sure.But to elaborately denounce, at this late day, a system we all know must be wildly wrong, would be simply to impeach the intelligence of the readers of this book.
4.18.THE REVELATION OF JOSEPH SMITH.
I have not troubled the reader with extracts from Mormon documents.
The Book of Mormon is ponderous, but gloomy, and at times incoherent; and I will not, by any means, quote from that.But the Revelation of Joseph Smith in regard to the absorbing question of plurality or polygamy may be of sufficient interest to reproduce here.The reader has my full consent to form his own opinion of it:--REVELATION GIVEN TO JOSEPH SMITH, NAUVOO, JULY, 12, 1843.
