By and by, from out the grey background of the picture, there stole the wild, tremulous, heart-broken wail of a mule.
It seemed to jar upon the surroundings and clash harshly against our sensitive natures. Some one of the party swore a little. Then another one came to the front, and took the job off his hands. We all joined, in a gentlemanly kind of way, in condemning the mule for his lack of tact, to say the least.
All at once the line of magnificent ruins shortened and became reduced in height. They changed their positions and moved off to the left, and our dream had melted into the matter of fact scene of twenty-two immigrant wagons drawn by rat-tail mules and driven by long-haired Mormons, with the dirt and bacon rinds of prehistoric times adhering to them everywhere.
What a vale of tears this is anyway!
We are only marching toward the tomb, after all. We should learn a valuable lesson from this and never tell a lie.