“Mormon!” There was such vigor in his explosive catching up of my query that I may well be pardoned if I thought he placed the common name for Sheol after that of the sect. But it stands to reason that he did not. His whole training would stop such a word ere it escaped him.
“Mormon! I should say not! Those grafters and polygamists are not our kind. They stole our name. We were the same until Brigham Young split off and led his crowd to Utah. Our headquarters is at Lamoni, Iowa, but I. N. Imbel, who’s gone to the schooner, my partner, and I are the missionaries in these islands. We’re properly authorized ministers who make this our regular and whole business. My pal and I live in Papeete, but run through the Paumotus when there’s anything doing.”
The reverend fellow had no airs about him.
“Sit down and take off your clothes and dry them, and I’ll rub your cuts with some liniment,” he invited. “They’ll dry in the sun, and here’s a pareu to slip over you. I’d like to tell you more about our work, so’s you won’t mix us up with those Mormons. They’re a tough bunch. My father’s the head of our mission in England, and I’m in charge of these islands. Every year we have a business meeting. That’s what this is; not a revival. We don’t believe in that emotion game. We call it a ‘reasonable service.’ We take up a collection, of course. We invite the natives to investigate our claims. We have the custom to get converts by debating with the Mormons, but after we had accepted a challenge to meet them in Papeete the French governor stopped the show, because a French law forbade such meetings. They used to have riots in France, it seems. The Mormons teach polygamy and other abominations. They’ll tell you they don’t, but they do. You ask any Mormon native if he believes in plural wives, and he’ll say yes, that the elders from America teach that it’s right. Those Mormons ran away from here once, when the French government scared them, and we got in and had most of the natives in the Paumotus that the Catholics hadn’t kept. Then when the Mormons saw there was no danger, they came back here from Salt Lake. Oh, they’re a bad outfit. We’re regularly ordained ministers, not farmers off on a lark. This temple here cost a thousand dollars, without the labor. That was all voluntary. Wait a minute!”
He dashed into a room, and returned with a pamphlet which purported to be the findings of the Court of Lake County, Ohio, and he read from it a decree that the Utah Mormons were a fragment and split off from the real simon-pure religion established by Joseph Smith in New York. I wished that Stevenson had been there to hear him, for I remembered his page of bewilderment at the enigma of the “Kanitu” and Mormoni in the Paumotus, and how he made comparisons of the Holy Willies of Scotland, and a New Guinea god named Kanitu. His uninquiring mind had not solved the problem.
“We beat those wolves in sheep’s clothing in this court,” said Elder Kidd, animatedly. “We’re the real church, and the Brighamites are a hollow sham.”
Mr. Kidd engaged my interest, true or pseudo-disciple of Joseph Smith. He was so human, so guileful, and had such an engaging smile and wink. He seemed to feel that he was in a soul-saving business thoroughly respectable, yet needing to be explained and defended to the Gentile. His competitors’ incompetency he deemed worthy of emphasis.
“Not long ago,” he said, “in certain of these Paumotus there had been a good deal of backsliding from our church. Nobody had stirred them up, and with these people you have got to keep their souls awake all the time or they’ll go to sleep, or, worse, get into the control of those Mormons. They’ll steal a convert like you’d peel a banana, and that’s what I call the limit of a dirty trick. The Mormons thought they had a puddin’ in these backsliders to pull them over to their side. I heard about it, and without a word to any one I took a run through the group. I went through that crowd of backsliders with a spiritual club, and I not only redeemed the old Josephites, but I baptized seventy-five others before you could run a launch from here to Anaa. It was like stealin’ persimmons from a blind farmer whose dog is chained. I was talkin’ to the head Mormon in Papeete shortly afterward, and he asked me what we were doin’. I counted off the seventy-five new ones, and he had to acknowledge his church hadn’t made a count in a long time. I offered to bet him anything he was beat to a finish, but he quit cold.”
The Reverend Mr. Kidd excused himself to go to the meeting-house and get his breakfast with some of his deacons. McHenry had returned from his tour of espionage. He was cast down at the poor chance for business.
“There’s nothing doin’,” he said. “Twenty years ago I was here with a schooner o’ booze to a Konito meetin’ like this. There was kegs o’ rum with bloody tops knocked in right in the road. An’ wimmin’! You’d a-gone nuts tryin’ to choose. This is what religi’n does to business. A couple o’ bleedin’ chinks sellin’ a few bottles o’ smell water, an’ a lot o’ Tahitians with fruit an’ picnic stuff. A thousand Kanakas in one bunch an’ not one drunk. By cripes, the mishes have ruined the trade. The American Government ought to interfere. You and me had better skin out to west’ard where there ain’t so many bloody preachers, an’ you can handle the Kanaka the way you want. To-night this mob’ll be in that meetin’-house singin’ their heads off, instead o’ buyin’ rum and dancin’ like they used to. Them two sky-pilots has got all the francs. Even the Chinks hasn’t made a turn. Kopcke of Papeete is here an’ ain’t made a sou. He’s goin’-a go to leeward.”