"Nothing more than that your father gave his consent
this morning, in my presence, to your marriage with Hiram Clawson."
"There, Alice," said brother Clawson, who at this moment made his appearance, "did I not tell you? You would not believe me."
"This matter begins to be serious," said Alice, "now that my father has given me away to a man that has one wife already, and is courting another beside me, both of them much handsomer than I am."
Hiram was nettled, for it was true that he was courting a third wife, and of the three Alice was the least beautiful. She then proposed, playfully, to elope with an old gentleman, a friend of the family. "I would do so," she said, "before I would be given away like an old mule, to a man who already has one wife, and is seeking for others."
Yet Alice, though doubtless giving expression at this time to the sentiments of her heart, was afterward prevailed upon, and consented to become No. 2 in the harem of Hiram B. Clawson. Hiram, having commenced at a much earlier age than his father-in-law, may, if unchecked in his career, yet rival him in the number of his wives and the extent and magnificence of his "plural" establishment.
Luna Young is a character. She is very wilful and headstrong. She always governed her sister Alice, and even her father could not control this wayward child.
She is the fourth daughter, by the first wife, two having died. She has light hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. She is very haughty and beautiful. Slender as the gazelle, and free and joyous as a bird, brooking no control, she was the light, and often the annoyance of her father's house in her girlish days. She is now married, and very likely will become amiable and docile, under Mormon discipline.
Lucy Decker Seely.
This is the first wife in "plurality,"—or the second "woman."