In the midst of all the car-tracks, and the many signs of commercial activity, a capering Indian, with a blanket flung round his shoulders, amused us by his childish glee and activity. He was in the exuberance of his wild freedom, among all the business and anxieties which civilization brings. What did he care for it all! He was having a good run, and, for the fun of it, was racing with a young fellow on horseback, and was making rather good time, too. I was interested in this child of the past, this offspring of wild life, as without thought or heed for anything but the present moment, he lived out his day.
In a short time we were at the city of the Mormons, seeing in the distance, as we approached it, the spectral waters of the Great Salt Lake.
XVIII
Salt Lake City. — The Governor of Utah. — The Zion Coöperative Store. — Thoughts on Mormonism. — The Semi-annual Conference. — The Eisteddfod. — The Mormon Temple. — Organ Music. — Panoramic View of Valley. — Statue of Brigham Young. — Excursion to Saltair. — Departure from Salt Lake City.
We had a full day in Salt Lake City, altogether too short a time for that interesting place, but we made the most of it and saw much.
We were favored with letters of introduction to Governor Wells, whom we found in the State House, in most democratic fashion. He seemed a perfect type of Utah, as seen at its best, cheerful and healthy, utterly unconventional. He seemed kindly by nature, and not from mere rules of etiquette. He received us in the office of the secretary of state; and, in his eagerness to arrange for some pleasure for us, in our short stay, he did not even think of asking us to be seated.
An additional carriage was soon hospitably placed at our disposal, in the kindest manner, and in it the governor himself gave us his company. We went first to the great Zion Coöperative Store, a huge establishment run by a joint-stock company, all members of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, as their more familiar designation runs. Here, one could see that mixture of everyday life and religion, which is such a marked feature of the Mormon development.
Mormonism, sprung from American soil, has developed within itself the ideas of Church and State, and the limitations of individual freedom and responsibility, which one would imagine only possible under the most extreme conditions of belief in the divine right of kings, and the more positive divine right of a visible church.
There is nothing new under the sun, and the principles which we supposed America never could brook, are here seen in embryo, or in fact, by the thoughtful observer. In view of the comfort and happiness which one sees in Utah, and the mutual sympathy which the ideas I have mentioned exhibit, one is forced to pause and ask himself, May there not be an object-lesson for us in all this? May we not have thrown away from our social state, with too stern a hand, all reliance upon churchly influence, and exaggerated also that idea of personal independence, so dear to us, forgetting that the individual, in all the relations of his life, is a part of the state, a member of the body of the nation, and should be the object of its sympathy, its care, and its government, at all times and in all places?