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Page 30
But to return to the city. As soon as City Creek approaches its upper
limit its waters are drawn off right and left, and distributed in
brisk rills, one on each side of every street, the regular slopes of
the delta upon which the city is built being admirably adapted to this
system of street irrigation. These streams are all pure and sparkling
in the upper streets, but, as they are used to some extent as sewers,
they soon manifest the consequence of contact with civilization,
though the speed of their flow prevents their becoming offensive, and
little Saints not over particular may be seen drinking from them
everywhere.
The streets are remarkably wide and the buildings low, making them
appear yet wider than they really are. Trees are planted along the
sidewalks--elms, poplars, maples, and a few catalpas and hawthorns;
yet they are mostly small and irregular, and nowhere form avenues half
so leafy and imposing as one would be led to expect. Even in the
business streets there is but little regularity in the buildings--now
a row of plain adobe structures, half store, half dwelling, then a
high mercantile block of red brick or sandstone, and again a row of
adobe cottages nestled back among apple trees. There is one immense
store with its sign upon the roof, in letters big enough to be read
miles away, "Z.C.M.I." (Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution),
while many a small, codfishy corner grocery bears the legend "Holiness
to the Lord, Z.C.M.I." But little evidence will you find in this
Zion, with its fifteen thousand souls, of great wealth, though many a
Saint is seeking it as keenly as any Yankee Gentile. But on the other
hand, searching throughout all the city, you will not find any trace of
squalor or extreme poverty.
Most of the women I have chanced to meet, especially those from the
country, have a weary, repressed look, as if for the sake of their
religion they were patiently carrying burdens heavier than they were
well able to bear. But, strange as it must seem to Gentiles, the many
wives of one man, instead of being repelled from one another by
jealousy, appear to be drawn all the closer together, as if the real
marriage existed between the wives only. Groups of half a dozen or so
may frequently be seen on the streets in close conversation, looking
as innocent and unspeculative as a lot of heifers, while the masculine
Saints pass them by as if they belonged to a distinct species. In the
Tabernacle last Sunday, one of the elders of the church, in
discoursing upon the good things of life, the possessions of Latter-Day
Saints, enumerated fruitful fields, horses, cows, wives, and
implements, the wives being placed as above, between the cows and
implements, without receiving any superior emphasis.
Polygamy, as far as I have observed, exerts a more degrading influence
upon husbands that upon wives. The love of the latter finds
expression in flowers and children, while the former seem to be
rendered incapable of pure love of anything. The spirit of Mormonism
is intensely exclusive and un-American. A more withdrawn, compact,
sealed-up body of people could hardly be found on the face of the
earth than is gathered here, notwithstanding railroads, telegraphs,
and the penetrating lights that go sifting through society everywhere
in this revolutionary, question-asking century. Most of the Mormons I
have met seem to be in a state of perpetual apology, which can hardly
be fully accounted for by Gentile attacks. At any rate it is
unspeakably offensive to any free man.
"We Saints," they are continually saying, "are not as bad as we are
called. We don't murder those who differ with us, but rather treat
them with all charity. You may go through our town night or day and
no harm shall befall you. Go into our houses and you will be well
used. We are as glad as you are that Lee was punished," etc. While
taking a saunter the other evening we were overtaken by a
characteristic Mormon, "an umble man," who made us a very deferential
salute and then walked on with us about half a mile. We discussed
whatsoever of Mormon doctrines came to mind with American freedom,
which he defended as best he could, speaking in an excited but
deprecating tone. When hard pressed he would say: "I don't understand
these deep things, but the elders do. I'm only an umble tradesman."
In taking leave he thanked us for the pleasure of our querulous
conversation, removed his hat, and bowed lowly in a sort of Uriah Heep
manner, and then went to his humble home. How many humble wives it
contained, we did not learn.
Fine specimens of manhood are by no means wanting, but the number of
people one meets here who have some physical defect or who attract
one's attention by some mental peculiarity that manifests itself
through the eyes, is astonishingly great in so small a city. It would
evidently be unfair to attribute these defects to Mormonism, though
Mormonism has undoubtedly been the magnet that elected and drew these
strange people together from all parts of the world.
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