In the eyes of the middle class there can be no greater crime than to make an attempt to break the fetters of the mental slaves and stir the minds of the plodding, unthinking mob and set them to thinking real thoughts and evolving new theories.
Go back a few years previous to the abolition of human slavery and notice how the advanced thinkers were treated. History tells how Thompson narrowly escaped the mob at Concord, for teaching that human slavery is a crime against God and man. Whittier was pelted with mud and stones, and Garrison was often mobbed in Boston.
At one time a subscription to a fund was asked of the Norfolk people to pay for the heads of Thompson, Garrison and Zappan, and many Southern cities threatened to boycott all cities in the North that allowed men to teach the abolition of slavery. And the plodding mob who were little better than slaves themselves were ready to cast the first stone or brickbat at the advanced thinkers who could see human slavery from the human side.
I know a woman in Colorado who had once been a Mormon. She had been born and reared in Mormondom. But she began to doubt the whole institution when asked to become the fourth wife of a wealthy Mormon elder. Her ideas had advanced beyond the pagan idea of such gross immorality. It was lucky for this woman that just outside of Utah there were thousands of people advanced beyond pagan morals. She fled from home one night in a covered wagon, and outside the city she met her lover, the young Gentile who had taught her the sham and pretentions of her father’s religion.
In Colorado they found safety and happiness. She was an old woman when I met her, but she said she still trembled when she looked back to her early experience. Had all the world believed in Mormonism she could not have escaped the lust of the Mormon elder and a life of misery.
HISSED AND HOOTED
I saw him when he first came out of the Sisters’ hospital. He had been with the Sells Brothers’ Circus, but was taken with mountain fever while the show was in Grand Junction, Colorado. His wife was a tight rope dancer and trapeze performer, and went on with the show. She may have regretted to go, and she may not have cared at all. She had never written to him after she went away. He told me confidentially that he suspected her of being infatuated with one of the acrobats, but hoped to win her back when he got on his feet again.
Somehow or other, every man with a pain at his heart came to me in that faraway town. Was it because I was homesick and kept longing, longing for the valleys of old Pennsylvania, and the unfortunate could read something in my face that encouraged them to unburden their souls to me? Even my wife was drawn into some of the unfortunate love affairs of the young men and women, and we listened to the tales of woe, like martyrs, and gave advice which we knew would never be followed; for who can advise a young man or woman in love?
One poor fellow had been jilted by a young woman who visited at our home very often, and he came around almost every evening to try and have a last interview with her. But she never came back after treating the young man so badly, for she knew our feelings in the matter. The man she jilted was a handsome boy—a young French Canadian, and the man she intended to marry was a boasting Yankee from Michigan.