Are you shocked by my ignorance—or my confession of it? Then let me ask you if you know that the Uintah Mountain Range, in Utah, is the only range in the entire country which runs east and west? And have you ever heard of the Pequop Mountains, or the Cedar Mountains, or the Santa Roasas, or the Egans, or the Humboldts, or the Washoes, or the Gosiutes, or the Toyales, or the Toquimas, or the Hot Creek Mountains? And did you know that in California as well as in New Hampshire there are the White Mountains? And what do you know of the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Ranges?
Not wishing to keep the class in geography after school, I shall not tell you about all these mountains, but will satisfy myself with the statement that, in an amphitheater formed between the two last mentioned ranges, at the head of a broad, irrigated valley, is situated Salt Lake City.
The very name of Salt Lake City had a flat sound in my ears; and in that mental album of imaginary photographs of cities, to which I have referred, I saw the Mormon capital as on a sandy plain, with the Great Salt Lake on one side and the Great Salt Desert on the other. Therefore, upon arriving, I was surprised again, for the lake is not visible at all, being a dozen miles distant, and the desert is removed still farther, while instead of sandy plains the mountains rise abruptly on three sides of the city, and on the fourth is the sweet valley, covered with rich farms and orchards, and dotted here and there with minor Mormon settlements.
Like Mark Twain, who visited Salt Lake many years ago, before the railroad went there, I managed to forget the lake entirely after I had been there for a little while. I made no excursion to Saltair Beach, the playground of the neighborhood, and only saw the lake when our train crossed a portion of it after leaving the city.
I do not know that the great pavilion at Saltair Beach, of which every one has seen pictures, is a Mormon property, but it well may be, for the Mormons have never been a narrow-minded sect with regard to decent gaieties. They approve of dancing, and the ragtime craze has reached them, for, as I was walking past the Lion House, one evening, I heard the music and saw a lot of young people "trotting" gaily, in the place where formerly resided most of the twenty odd known wives of the late Brigham Young. Later a Mormon told me that dances are held in Mormon meeting-houses and that they are always opened with prayer.
Also in the café of the Hotel Utah there was dancing every night, and when the members of the "Honeymoon Express" Company put in an appearance there one night, we might have been on Broadway. The hotel, I was informed, is owned by Mormons; it is an excellent establishment. They do not stare at you as though they thought you an eccentric if you ask for tea at five o'clock, but bring it to you in the most approved fashion, with a kettle and a lamp, and the neatest silver tea service I have ever seen in an American hotel. But that is by the way, for I was speaking of the frivolities of Mormondom, and afternoon tea is, with me at least, a serious matter.
Salt Lake City was, until a few years ago, a "wide open town." The "stockade" was famous among the red-light institutions of the country. But that is gone, having been washed away by our national "wave of reform," and the town has now a rather orderly appearance, although it is not without its night cafés, one of them being the inevitable "Maxim's," without which, it would appear, no American city is now complete.
One of the first things the Mormons did, on establishing their city, was to build an amusement hall, and as long as fifty years ago, this was superseded by the Salt Lake Theatre, a picturesque old playhouse which is still standing, and which looks, inside and out, like an old wartime wood-cut of Ford's Theatre in Washington. Even before the railroads came the best actors and actresses in the country played in this theater, drawn there by the strong financial inducements which the Mormons offered, and it is interesting to note that many stage favorites of to-day made their first appearances in this playhouse. If I am not mistaken, Edwin Milton Royle made his début as an actor there, and both Maude Adams and Ada Dwyer were born in Salt Lake City, and appeared upon the stage for the first time at the Salt Lake Theatre. Yes, it is an interesting and historic playhouse, and I hope that when it burns up, as I have no doubt it ultimately will, no audience will be present, for I think that it will go like tinder. And although I still bemoan the money which I spent to see there, a maudlin entertainment called "The Honeymoon Express," direct from that home of banal vulgarities, the New York Winter Garden, I cannot quite bring myself to hope that when the Salt Lake Theatre burns, the man who wrote "The Honeymoon Express," the manager who produced it, and the company which played it, will be rehearsing there. For all their sins, I should not like to see them burned, though as to being roasted—well, that is a different thing.
Whatever may be one's opinion of the matrimonial industry of Brigham Young, the visitor to Salt Lake City will not dispute that the late leader of the Mormons knew, far better than most men of his day, how a town should be laid out. The blocks of Salt Lake City are rectangular; the lots are large, the streets wide and admirably paved with asphalt, almost all the houses are low, and stand in their own green grounds, and perhaps the most characteristic note of all is given by the poplars and box elders which grow everywhere, not only in the city, but throughout the valley.
Besides my preconceptions as to the city, I arrived in Salt Lake City with certain preconceptions as to Mormons. I expected them to be radically different, somehow, from all other people I had met. I anticipated finding them deceitful and evasive: furtive people, wandering in devious ways and disappearing into mysterious houses, at dead of night. I wanted to see them, I wanted to talk with them, but I wondered, nervously, whether one might speak to them about themselves and their religion, and more especially, whether one might use the words "Mormon" and "polygamy" without giving offense.