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. I don'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 I don'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:—