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cabinet-making has moved me to give a feast, and I thereat drink more healths than are consistent with my own, the Church surely knows that fact the very next day; and as Utah recognizes no impunitive "getting drunk in the bosom of one's family," I am again sent for, on this occasion to pay a fine, probably exceeding the expenses of my feast. A second offence is punished with imprisonment as well as fine; for no imprisonment avoids fine,- this comes in every case. The hand of the Church holds the souls of the saints by inevitable pursestrings. But I cannot waste time by enumerating the multitudinous lapses and offences which all bring revenue to the Herring-safe.

Over all these matters Brigham Young has supreme control. His power is the most despotic known to mankind. Here, by the way, is the constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism. If fear of establishing a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking up that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious marriage-institutions, Utah is still open to grave punishment, and the Administration inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each of the nation's constituent sections a republican form of government, -something which Utah has never enjoyed any more than Timbuctoo. I once asked Brigham if Dr. Bernhisel would be likely to get to Congress again. "No," he replied, with perfect certainty; we shall send as our Delegate." (I think he mentioned Colonel Kinney, but do not remember absolutely.) Whoever it was, when the time came, Brigham would send in his name to the "Deseret News," whose office, like everything else valuable and powerful, is in his inclosure. It would be printed as a matter of course; a counter-nomination is utterly unheard of; and on election-daywould be Delegate as surely as the sun

rose.

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The mountain-stream that irrigates the city, flowing to all the gardens through open ditches on each side of the

street, passes through Brigham's inclosure: if the saints needed drought to humble them, he could set back the waters to their source. The road to the only cañon where firewood is attainable runs through the same close, and is barred by a gate of which he holds the sole key. A familyman, wishing to cut fuel, must ask his leave, which is generally granted on condition that every third or fourth load is deposited in the inclosure, for Church-pur

poses.

Thus everything vital, save the air he breathes, reaches the Mormon only through Brigham's sieve. What more absolute despotism is conceivable? Here lies the pou-sto for the lever of Governmental interference. The mere fact of such power resting in one man's irresponsible hands is a crime against the Constitution. At the same time, this power, wonderful as it may seem, is practically wielded for the common good. I never heard Brigham's worst enemies accuse him of peculation, though such immense interests are controlled by his one pair of hands. His life is all one great theoretical mistake, yet he makes fewer practical mistakes than any other man, so situated, whom the world ever saw. Those he does make are not on the side of self. He merges his whole personality in the Church, with a self-abnegation which would establish in business a whole century of martyrs having a worthy cause.

The cut of Brigham's hair led me away from his personal description. To return to it: his eyes are a clear blue-gray, frank and straightforward in their look; his nose a finely chiselled aquiline; his mouth exceedingly firm, and fortified in that expression by a chin almost as protrusive beyond the rest of the profile as Charlotte Cushman's, though less noticeably so, being longer than hers; and be wears a narrow ribbon of brown beard, meeting under the chin. I think I have heard Captain Burton say that he had irregular teeth, which made his smile unpleasant. Since the Captain's visit, our always benevolent President, Mr. Lincoln, has altered all that, sending out as Territorial Secretary a Mr. Ful

ler, who, besides being a successful politician, was an excellent dentist. He secured Brigham's everlasting gratitude by making him a very handsome false set, and performing the same service for all of his favorite, but edentate wives. Several other apostles of the Lord owe to Mr. Fuller their ability to gnash their teeth against the Gentiles. The result was that he became the most popular Federal officer (who did n't turn Mormon) ever sent to Utah. The man who obtains ascendency over the mouths of the authorities cannot fail ere-long to get their ears.

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Brigham's manners astonish any one who knows that his only education was a few quarters of such common-school experience as could be had in Ontario County, Central New York, during the early part of the century. There are few courtlier men living. His address is a fine combination of dignity with the desire to confer happiness, of perfect deference to the feelings of others with absolute certainty of himself and his own opinions. He is a remarkable example of the educating influence of tactful perception, combined with entire singleness of aim, considered quite apart from its moral character. His early life was passed among the uncouth and illiterate; his daily associations, since he embraced Mormonism, have been with the least cultivated grades of human society, — a heterogeneous peasant-horde, looking to him for erection into a nation: yet he has so clearly seen what is requisite in the man who would be respected in the Presidency, and has so unreservedly devoted his life to its attainment, that in protracted conversations with him I heard only a single solecism, (“a'n't you" for 66 are n't you,") and saw not one instance of breeding which would be inconsistent with noble lineage.

I say all this good of him frankly, disregarding any slur that may be cast on me as his defender by those broad-effect artists who always paint the Devil black,for I think it high time that the Mormon enemies of our American Idea should be

plainly understood as far more dangerous antagonists than hypocrites or idiots can ever hope to be. Let us not twice commit the blunder of underrating our foes.

it

Brigham began our conversation at the theatre by telling me I was late, was after nine o'clock. I replied, that this was the time we usually set about dressing for an evening party in Boston or New York.

"Yes," said he, "you find us an oldfashioned people; we are trying to return to the healthy habits of patriarchal times."

"Need you go back so far as that for your parallel?" suggested I. "It strikes me that we might have found four-o'clock balls among the early Christians."

He smiled, without that offensive affectation of some great men, the air of taking another's joke under their gracious patronage, and went on to remark that there were, unfortunately, multitudinous differences between the Mormons and Americans at the East, besides the hours they kept.

"You find us," said he, "trying to live peaceably. A sojourn with people thus minded must be a great relief to you, who come from a land where brother hath lifted hand against brother, and you hear the confused noise of the warrior perpetually ringing in your ears."

Despite the courtly deference and Scriptural dignity of this speech, I detected in it a latent crow over that "perished Union" which was the favorite theme of every saint I met in Utah, and hastened to assure the President that I had no desire for relief from sympathy with my country's struggle for honor and existence.

"Ah!" he replied, in a voice slightly tinged with sarcasm. "You differ greatly, then, from multitudes of your countrymen, who, since the draft began to be talked of, have passed through Salt Lake, flying westward from the crime of their brothers' blood."

"I do indeed."

"Still, they are excellent men. Brother

Heber Kimball and myself are every week invited to address a train of them down at Emigrant Square. They are honest, peaceful people. You call them 'Copperheads,' I believe. But they are real, true, good men. We find them very truth-seeking, remarkably open to conviction. Many of them have stayed with us. Thus the Lord makes the wrath of man to praise Him. The Abolitionists the same people who interfered with our institutions, and drove us out into the wilderness - interfered with the Southern institutions till they broke up the Union. But it's all coming out right, a great deal better than we could have arranged it for ourselves. The men who flee from Abolitionist oppression come out here to our ark of refuge, and people the asylum of God's chosen. You'll all be out here before long. Your Union 's gone forever. Fighting only makes matters worse. your country has become a desolation, we, the saints whom you cast out, will forget all your sins against us, and give you a home."

When

There was something so preposterous in the idea of a mighty and prosperous people abandoning, through abject terror of a desperate set of Southern conspirators, the fertile soil and grand commercial avenues of the United States, to populate a green strip in the heart of an inaccessible desert, that, until I saw Brigham Young's face glowing with what he deemed prophetic enthusiasm, I could not imagine him in earnest. Before I left Utah, I discovered, that, without a single exception, all the saints were inoculated with a prodigious craze, to the effect that the United States was to become a blighted chaos, and its inhabitants Mormon proselytes and citizens of Utah within the next two years, the more sanguine said, "next summer."

At first sight, one point puzzled me. Where were they to get the orthodox number of wives for this sudden accession of converts? My gentlemen-readers will feel highly flattered by a solution of this problem which I received from

no lesser light of the Latter-Day Church than that jolly apostle, Heber Kimball.

"Why," said the old man, twinkling his little black eyes like a godly Silenus, and nursing one of his fat legs with a lickerish smile, "is n't the Lord Almighty providin' for His beloved heritage jist as fast as He anyways kin? This war 's a-goin' on till the biggest part o' you male Gentiles hez killed each other off, then the leetle handful that 's left and comes a-fleein' t' our asylum 'll bring all the women o' the nation along with 'em, so we shall hev women enough to give every one on 'em all they want, and hev a large balance left over to distribute round among God's saints that hez been here from the beginnin' o' the tribulation."

The sweet taste which this diabolical reflection seemed to leave in Heber Kimball's mouth made me long to knock him down worse than I had ever felt regarding either saint or sinner. But it is costly to smite an apostle of the Lord in Salt Lake City; and I merely retaliated by telling him I wished I could hear him say that in a lecture-room full of SanitaryCommission ladies scraping lint for their husbands, sweethearts, and brothers in the Union army. I did n't know whether saints made good lint, but I thought I knew one who'd get scraped a little.

To resume Brigham for the last time. After a conversation about the Indians, in which he denounced the military policy of the Government, averring that one bale of blankets and ten pounds of beads would go farther to protect the mails from stoppage and emigrants from massacre than a regiment of soldiers, he discovered that we crossed swords on every warquestion, and tactfully changed the subject to the beauty of the Opera-House.

As to the Indians, let me remark bythe-by, I did not tell him that I understood the reason of his dislike to severe measures in that direction. Infernally bestial and cruel as are the Goshoots, PiUtes, and other Desert tribes, still they have never planned any extensive raid since the Mormons entered Utah. In

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every settlement of the saints you will find from two to a dozen young men who wear their black hair cut in the Indian fashion, and speak all the surrounding dialects with native fluency. Whenever a fatly provided wagon-train is to be attacked, a fine herd of emigrants' beeves stampeded, the mail to be stopped, or the Gentiles in any way harassed, these desperadoes stain their skin, exchange their clothes for a breech-clout, and rally a horde of the savages, whose favor they have always propitiated, for the ambush and massacre, which in all but the element of brute force is their work in plan, leadership, and execution. I have multitudes of most interesting facts to back this assertion, but am already in danger of overrunning my allowed limits.

The Opera House was a subject we could agree upon. I was greatly astonished to find in the desert heart of the continent a place of public amusement which for capacity, beauty, and comfort has no superior in America, except the operahouses of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. It is internally constructed somewhat like the first of these, seats twenty-five hundred people, and commodiously receives five hundred more, when, as in the present instance, the stage is thrown into the parquet, and the latter boarded up to the level of the former for dancing. Externally the building is a plain, but not ungraceful structure, of stone, brick, and stucco. My greatest surprise was excited by the really exquisite artistic beauty of the gilt and painted decorations of the great arch over the stage, the cornices, and the moulding about the proscenium-boxes. President Young, with a proper pride, assured me that every particle of the ornamental work was by indigenous and saintly hands.

"But you don't know yet," he added, "how independent we are of you at the East. Where do you think we got that central chandelier, and what d' ye suppose we paid for it?"

It was a piece of workmanship which would have been creditable to any New York firm, apparently a richly carved

circle, twined with gilt vines, leaves, and tendrils, blossoming all over with flaming wax-lights, and suspended by a massive chain of golden lustre. So I replied that he probably paid a thousand dollars for it in New York.

"Capital!" exclaimed Brigham. "I made it myself! That circle is a cartwheel which I washed and gilded; it hangs by a pair of gilt ox-chains; and the ornaments of the candlesticks were all cut after my patterns out of sheet-tin!"

I talked with the President till a party of young girls, who seemed to regard him with idolatry, and whom, in return, he treated with a sage mixture of gallantry and fatherliness, came to him with an invitation to join in some old-fashioned contra-dance long forgotten at the East. I was curious to see how he would acquit himself in this supreme ordeal of dignity; so I descended to the parquet, and was much impressed by the aristocratic grace with which he went through his figures.

After that I excused myself from numerous kind invitations by the ball-committee to be introduced to a partner and join in the dances. The fact was that I greatly wished to make a thorough physiognomical study of the ball-room, and I know that my readers will applaud my self-denial in not dancing, since it enables me to tell them how Utah good society looks.

After spending an hour in a circuit and survey of the room as minute as was compatible with decency, I arrived at the following results.

There was very little ostentation in dress at the ball, but there was also very little taste in dressing. Patrician broadcloth and silk were the rare exceptions, generally ill-made and ill-worn, but they cordially associated with the great mass of plebeian tweed and calico. Few ladies wore jewelry or feathers. There' were some pretty girls swimming about in tasteful whip-syllabub of puffed tarlatan. Where saintly gentlemen came with several wives, the oldest generally seemed the most elaborately dressed, and

acted much like an Eastern chaperon toward her younger sisters. (Wives of the same man habitually besister each other in Utah. Another triumph of grace!) Among the men I saw some very strong and capable faces; but the majority had not much character in their looks, indeed, differed little in that regard from any average crowd of men anywhere. Among the women, to my surprise, I found no really degraded faces, though many stolid ones, only one deeply dejected, (this belonged to the wife of a hitherto monogamic husband, who had left her alone in the dress-circle, while he was dancing with a chubby young Mormoness, likely to be added to the family in a month or two,) but many impassive ones; and though I saw multitudes of kindly, good-tempered countenances, and a score which would have been called pretty anywhere, I was obliged to confess, after a most impartial and anxious search, that I had not met a single woman who looked high-toned, firstclass, capable of poetic enthusiasm or heroic self-devotion, not a single woman whom an artist would dream of and ask to sit for a study, not one to whom a finely constituted intellectual man could come for companionship in his pursuits or sympathy in his yearnings. Because I knew that this verdict would be received at the East with a "Just as you might have expected!" I cast aside everything like prejudice, and forgot that I was in Utah, as I threaded the great throng.

I must condense greatly what I have to say about two other typical men besides Brigham Young, or I shall have no room to speak of the Lake and the Desert. Heber Kimball, second President, (proximus longo intervallo!) Brigham's most devoted worshipper, and in all respects the next most important man, although atterly incapable of keeping coherent the vast tissue of discordant Mormon elements, in case he should survive Brigham, is the latter's equal in years, but in all things else his antipodes. His height is over six feet, his form of alder

manic rotundity, his face large, pletho ric, and lustrous with the stable red of stewed cranberries, while his small, twinkling black beads of eyes and a Satyric sensualism about the mouth would indicate a temperament fatally in the way of any apostleship save that of polygamy, even without the aid of an induction from his favorite topics of discourse and his patriarchally unvarnished style of handling them. Men, everywhere, unfortunately, tend little toward the error of bashfulness in their chat among each other, but most of us at the East would feel that we were insulting the lowest member of the demi-monde, if we uttered before her a single sentence of the talk which forms the habitual staple of all Heber Kimball's public sermons to the wives and daughters who throng the Sunday Tabernacle.

Heber took a vivid interest in Bierstadt's and my own eternal welfare. He quite laid himself out for our conversion, coming to sit with us at breakfast in our Mormon hotel, dressed in a black swallow-tail, buff vest, and a stupendous trun'cate cone of Leghorn, which made him look like an Italian mountebank-physician of the seventeenth century. I have heard men who could misquote Scripture for their own ends, and talk a long while without saying anything; but he so far surpassed in these particulars the loftiest efforts within my former experience, that I could think of no comparison for him but Jack Bunsby taken to exhorting. Witness a sample:

That don't No! God's And therefore not in no way,

"Seven women shall take a hold o' one man! There!" (with a slap on the back of the nearest subject for conversion). "What d'ye think o' that? Shall ! Shall take a hold on him! mean they sha'n't, does it? word means what it says. means no otherwise, shape, nor manner. Not in no way, for He saith, I am the way - and the truth and the life.' Not in no shape, for a man beholdeth his nat'ral shape in a glass; nor in no manner, for he straightway forgetteth what manner o' man he Seven women shall catch a hold

was.

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