seekers and interviewers might possibly have become a trifle tedious in Salt Lake City, and especially so in the office of the President.

"How do you do! Glad to see you! Pass on, if you please!" was the salutation, accompanied by a touch of the hand as each guest was presented, and when nearly all had passed on and sat down and the host resumed his own seat an awful pause fell upon the assembled company, broken presently by a sonorous assertion from the President that it was a pleasant day.

This was eagerly assented to by Mr. Leslie, who added that the weather had been fine for some days, and the conversation flowed on in this agreeable strain for some moments, during which time we studied the appearance of the man who had certainly made for himself a wide reputation.

We found it both formidable and attractive: a fine, tall, well-developed figure, a trifle too stout, perhaps; a fresh, ruddy complexion, almost befitting a young girl; keen blue eyes, not telling too much of what went on behind them; a full mouth; a singularly magnetic manner; a voice hard and cold in its formal speech, but low and impressive when used confidentially; altogether a man of mark anywhere, and one whose wonderful influence over the minds and purses of men, and the hearts and principles. of women, could be much more fully credited after an hour's conversation than before.

Perceiving that the interview was but a "function" for President Young and one whose brevity would doubtless be the soul of its wit, I resolved to constitute myself the Curtius of our party, and approching the sacred sofa remarked to my husband, who was seated thereon, that I would change places with him, as I had some information to ask of the President.

Mr. Leslie arose with suspicious alacrity, and for the first time a gleam of interest shone in Brigham Young's cobalt blue eyes as he turned them upon the bold intruder, whose first question was:

"Do you suppose, Mr. President, that I came all the way to Salt Lake City to hear that it was a fine day?"

"I am sure you need not, my dear," was the ready response of this cavalier of seventy-six years, "for it must be fine weather wherever you are."

The conversation thus established went upon velvet, and as the rest of the party began to talk among themselves, presently assumed a confidential and interesting turn, and we felt that what Mr. Young said upon matters of Mormon faith and Mormon practice he said with a sincerity and earnestness not always put in a man's mere public and general utterances.

Glancing at Joseph Smith's portrait, we ventured the criticism that it did not show any great amount of strength, intelligence or culture. Mr. Young admitted the criticism, and said that Smith was not a man of great character naturally, but that he was inspired by God as a prophet, and spoke at times not from himself but by inspiration; he was not a man of education, but received such enlightenment from the Holy Spirit that he needed nothing more to fit him for his work as a leader. "And this is my own case also," pursued Mr. Young, quite simply. "My father was a frontiersman, unlearned, and obliged to struggle for his children's food day by day, with no time to think of their education. All that I have acquired is by my own

THE BEEHIVE-PRINCIPAL RESIDENCE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG, IN SALT LAKE CITY.

exertions and by the grace of God, who sometimes chooses the weak things of earth to manifest His glory."

This want of education, he went on to say, was one of the greatest drawbacks and trials to the older generation of Mormons; they had been, almost without exception, poor and unlettered people, gathered from all parts of the world, and obliged, especially after their arrival in Utah, to use every energy and all their time to make productive and life-sustaining homes from the desert lands and savage wilderness into which they had penetrated.

"But this is all over now, thank God!" ejaculated the President, with a gesture of relief. "Our homes are made, our country is prosperous, and our educational privileges are equal or superior to any State in the Union. Here, every child of six can read and write, and there is no limit to what they may learn as they grow older."

I said that I had spoken of these matters with Miss Snow, "formerly one of your wives," as I somewhat diffidently phrased it, but the patriarch, with a calm smile, amended the sentence, "My wife still, if you please, my dear. Once having entered into that relationship, we always remain in it, unless" -and his comely face clouded "unless under very peculiar circumstances."

"Nothing will change the Mormon ideas of polygamy, I suppose ?" I suggested.

Mr. Young glanced at me keenly, but replied, devoutly: "No, nothing can, since it is given to them by the grace of God. It is not obligatory, of course, but it is a blessing and a privilege vouchsafed to His chosen saints."

The conversation was here interrupted, but the President himself resumed it by saying, in a confidential voice, that Utah would, within two or three

generations, present the finest specimens of men and women to be found in this country, for they would spring from marriages of pure affinity, and a state of society impossible except under polygamy.

"Why," said he, "I have walked the streets of your great city at night, and my heart has bled to see the hollow eyes and painted cheeks of the women who walked them, too, and who lead away the young men who are to be the husbands of this, and the fathers of the next generation. Not one such woman is to be found in all Utah, and our young men are pure, our women are virtuous, and our children born free from inherited disease."

66

'But are all the women of Utah sure to marry?" asked I.

"A woman feeling herself drawn in affinity to a man, and feeling inclined to seal herself to him, should make her idea known to him without scruple. It is her duty, and there can be no indelicacy in obeying the voice of duty." At last I regarded the urgent gesture of those who had been less well-entertained, and rose to depart, Mr. Young taking leave much more impressively than he had greeted us.

We had scarcely reached New York, when the news came of his sudden death; and all that had struck me as doubtful, or wrong, or ludicrous in the strange system of life he upheld, and of which he was the center, disappeared in the solemn respect and silence with which one remembers the dead whose lives have, even for an hour, intersected our own. He was an honest and sincere believer in his own theories-however wrong and perverted-and lived up to his own convictions of duty. And how many who sneer at him dare say the same?