Now mine is of course, in its essence, a spoof show. I rely on my patter for effect, and on my sleight-of-hand to draw the applause of my audiences. These people, I gathered later on, expected me to perform some wonderful illusions with the aid of a lot of complicated apparatus.
When I first went on the stage there was a lot of applause and hand-clapping from the front row where the magicians were, mingled with shouts of:
“Welcome to our city.”
But as I proceeded with my show, I could see that their opinion of me was rapidly undergoing a radical change. “The fellow’s not a magician,” they exclaimed to one another; “he’s an impostor. Why, we could do better tricks ourselves.”
They mostly quitted the theatre before the show was over, and I heard no more of the proposed dinner. But I pleased my audience all right, which was of course the main thing, and the unstinted applause which came from all parts of the house, both then and thereafter, proved to me that they, at all events, wished me:
“Welcome to our city.”
I had heard a lot about the Mormons—who has not?—and I was quite looking forward to visiting Salt Lake City, where I was billed to appear at the Orpheum Music-hall. As a matter of fact, however, I was rather disappointed with the place, which has little to recommend it to the casual visitor.
Of course we “did the rounds,” and saw all the sights worth seeing, notably the Temple and the Tabernacle. The former is a very fine building, but we only saw it from the outside, no others than Mormons being permitted to enter its sacred precincts. It is said to have cost £600,000, and to have occupied forty years in building. On the topmost pinnacle, dominating the whole city, is a statue of the angel Moroni, over twelve feet high, of beaten copper, covered with purest gold. Moroni is the angel who, according to Mormon mythology, is supposed to have revealed to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, the existence and location of the golden plates on which were inscribed in mystic characters the writings afterwards translated and published as the “Book of Mormon.”
Salt Lake also boasts of a very fine statue of Brigham Young. He stands with his back to the Temple, and his right hand stretched out to the Deseret National Bank opposite. Scoffing Gentiles, of whom there are many in the city, say that the pose is characteristic of the man. We were also shown the Bee House and the Lion House, as they are called, buildings joined together by covered passages, where in the old days Brigham kept his numerous wives. Originally it was surrounded, after the fashion of an Eastern seraglio, by a high wall, so that no prying eyes could penetrate its interior; but this was pulled down after Young’s death.
It was in Salt Lake City, by the way, that I was treated to absolutely the worst newspaper slating that my poor little show has ever called forth. “Carlton the long magician”—so ran the notice—“has the most disgusting and joy-killing ten minutes the Orpheum stage has offered in recent times. For cheap, slap, stick stuff, he gets the blue ribbon. The Orpheum has no business inflicting such a pest on its patrons. It is easy to believe the statements made by the eastern vaudeville booking agents that good acts are hard to get these days.”