CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE.
[From Lecture on the Mormons.]
Brother Kimball is a gay and festive cuss, of some seventy summers, or some'er's there about. He has one thousand head of cattle and a hundred head of wives. He says they are awful eaters.
Mr. Kimball had a son, a lovely young man, who was married to ten interesting wives. But one day while he was absent from home these ten wives went out walking with a handsome young man, which so enraged Mr. Kimball's son—which made Mr. Kimball'a son so jealous—that he shot himself with a horse-pistol.
The doctor who attended him—a very scientific man—informed me that the bullet entered the parallelogram of his diaphragmatic thorax, superinducing hemorrhage in the outer cuticle of his basilicon thaumaturgist. It killed him. I should have thought it would.
(Soft Music.)
I hope this sad end will be a warning to all young wives who go out walking with handsome young men. Mr. Kimball's son is now no more. He sleeps beneath the cypress, the myrtle, and the willow. The music is a dirge by the eminent pianist for Mr. Kimball's son. He died by request.
I regret to say that efforts were made to make a Mormon of me while I was in Utah.
It was leap-year when I was there, and seventeen young widows, the wives of a deceased Mormon, offered me their hearts and hands. I called on them one day, and, taking their soft white hands in mine, which made eighteen hands altogether, I found them in tears, and I said, "Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?"
They hove a sigh—seventeen sighs of different size. They said:
"O, soon thou wilt be gonested away!"
I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I wentested.
They said, "Doth not like us?"
I said, "I doth—I doth."
I also said, "I hope your intentions are honorable, as I am a lone child, my parents being far—far away."
Then they said, "Wilt not marry us?"
I said, "O, no, it cannot was!"
Again they asked me to marry them, and again I declined, when they cried,
"O, cruel man! this is too much! O, too much!"
I told them that it was on account of the muchness that I declined. . . .
(Pointing to Panorama)
A more cheerful view of the desert.
The wild snow-storms have left us and we have thrown our wolf-skin overcoats aside. Certain tribes of far-western Indians bury their distinguished dead by placing them high in air and covering them with valuable furs. That is a very fair representation of those mid-air tombs. Those animals are horses. I know they are, because my artist says so. I had the picture two years before I discovered the fact. The artist came to me about six months ago and said, "It is useless to disguise it from you any longer, they are horses."
It was while crossing this desert that I was surrounded by a band of Ute Indians. They were splendidly mounted. They were dressed in beaver-skins, and they were armed with rifles, knives, and pistols.
What could I do? What could a poor old orphan do? I'm a brave man. The day before the battle of Bull's Run I stood in the highway while the bullets—those dreadful messengers of death—were passing all around me thickly—in wagons—on their way to the battle-field. But there were too many of these Injuns. There were forty of them, and only one of me, and so I said:
"Great chief, I surrender."
His name was Wocky-bocky. He dismounted and approached me. I saw his tomahawk glisten in the morning sunlight. Fire was in his eye. Wocky-bocky came very close
(Pointing to Panorama)
to me and seized me by the hair of my head. He mingled his swarthy fingers with my golden tresses, and he rubbed his dreadful tomahawk across my lily-white face. He said:
"Torsha arrah darrah mishky bookshean!"
I told him he was right.
Wocky-bocky again rubbed his tomahawk across my face, and said:
"Wink-ho-loo-boo!"
Says I, "Mr. Wocky-bocky," says I, "Wocky, I have thought so for years, and so's all our family."
He told me I must go to the tent of the Strong Heart and eat raw dog. It don't agree with mo. I prefer simple food. I prefer pork-pie, because then I know what I'm eating. But as raw dog was all they proposed to give to me I had to eat it or starve. So at the expiration of two days I seized a tin plate and went to the chief's daughter, and I said to her in a silvery voice—in a kind of German-silvery voice—I said:
"Sweet child of the forest, the pale-face wants his dog."
There was nothing but his paws. I had paused too long—which reminds me that time passes—a way which time has. I was told in my youth to seize opportunity. I once tried to seize one. He was rich; he had diamonds on. As I seized him he knocked me down. Since then I have learned that he who seizes opportunity sees the penitentiary.