Evidently my remarks were overheard, and before I realized it I was in a discussion of Mormon doctrines with a woman, a zealous defender of her faith, whose religious zeal shone out of her face, which was homely enough to need this adornment to save it from repulsive ugliness.
Of course she believed implicitly in the Book of Mormon, the plates of which were found, and translated from a language which the best informed philologists have never known to exist; in a God who has body, parts and passions, in spirits which fill Heaven, and clamor to be born onto the Earth, in the baptism for the dead, and in that strange doctrine, that no woman can be saved without being sealed to a man, upon which the practice of polygamy rested.
The Herr Director did not quite understand, and I had to explain each of these dogmas as well as I could, and then the Frau Directorin, not understanding anything, begged to be told about the one thing in which she was primarily interested, their belief in regard to marriage. I asked the lady to explain this doctrine of the Mormons, to which she replied that they are not Mormons, but Latter Day Saints. She was indeed a saint, for she was not offended by our curiosity, nor the lack of seriousness with which we were discussing the subject.
She addressed the Frau Directorin: “You are married to your husband.” The Frau Directorin understood and nodded comprehendingly; “but,” the saint continued, “you are married to him only for time.”
“No, no, not for a time, not for a time!” the Frau Directorin cried, clinging to her husband, who had jokingly threatened that when they reached Utah he would improve the occasion and double his blessings.
“You could not be married to him any other way unless you are sealed according to our rites; we alone marry for eternity.”
“Oh!” said the facetious Herr Director, “you believe in eternal punishment.” When I translated that to the Frau Directorin she slapped him playfully.
He asked our guide how many wives he could marry if he became a Latter Day Saint and she said there would be no limit to the wives he could have sealed to him; but according to the latest ruling of the church and in conformity with the laws of the United States, only one to live with here upon the earth; so he decided to “bear the ills he had,” and not “fly to others that he knew not of.”
The saint could not have expected her teaching to take root in soil so shallow, but she determined to sow a few more seeds, and showed us the interior of the Tabernacle with its “largest organ in the world and its perfect acoustics.” The Frau Directorin tried her charming voice and sang, much to the delight of the saint, who confessed to three consuming passions. She loved to sing better than to eat, next in order came dancing, which seems to be a specialty among Mormons, and evidently does not interfere with their piety, and third, that of saving feminine souls from destruction, on account of their unmarried state. To satisfy this last passion she has had ten thousand of her female ancestors married to well-known Mormons. To accomplish this, she had her genealogical tree traced back to prehistoric times, and had spent her fortune upon that pious extravagance. She told us that she was a plural wife, and living with her husband merely in the celestial relationship: but she believed polygamy to be in harmony with the will of God, and that the women as a whole favor it.
As we returned to our hotel, the Frau Directorin amused herself by asking each child she met: “How much brothers and sisters you are?” I was profoundly thankful she did not stop the men to ask them about the number of their wives.