"Now, in trying to understand the Mormons, the first thing to remember is that they are human beings, with the same set of virtues and failings and feelings as other human beings. There are some who are dogmatically religious; some with whom marriage—even plural marriage—is just as pure and spiritual a thing as it is with any other people in the world. On the other hand, some Mormons, like some members of other sects, have doubtless had lusts. The family life of some Mormons is very beautiful, and as smoking, drinking and other dissipations are forbidden, orthodox Mormon men lead very clean lives. In this they are upheld by our women, for many Mormon women will not marry a man excepting in our Temple, and no man who has broken the rules of the church may be married there.
"Among the younger generation of Mormons you will see the same general line of characteristics as among young people anywhere. Some of them grow up into strict Mormons, while others—particularly some of the sons of rich Mormons—are what you might call 'sports.' Human nature is no different in Utah than elsewhere.
"My father had several wives and I had a great number of brothers and sisters. We didn't live like one big family, and the half-brothers and half-sisters did not feel towards each other as real brothers and sisters do. When my father was a very old man he married a young wife, and we felt about it just as any other sons and daughters would at seeing their father do such a thing. We felt it was a mistake, and that it was not just to us, for father had not many more years to live, and it appeared that on his death we might have his young wife and her family to look after.
"My views are such that in bringing up my own children I have not had them baptized as Mormons at the age of eight, according to the custom of the church. This has grieved my people, but I cannot help it. I am bringing my children up to fear God and lead clean lives, but I do not think I have the right to force them into any church, and I propose to leave the matter of joining or not joining to their own discretion, later on."
Another Mormon, this one orthodox, and a cultivated man, told me he thought that in most cases the old polygamous marriages were entered into with a spirit of real religious fervor.
"My father married two wives," he said. "He loved my mother, who was his first wife, very dearly, and they are as fine and contented a couple as you ever saw. But when the revelation as to polygamy was made, father took a second wife because he believed it to be his duty to do so."
"How did your mother feel about it?" I asked.
"I have no doubt," said he, "that it hurt mother terribly, but she was submissive because she believed it was right. And later, when the manifesto against polygamy was issued, it hurt father's second wife, when he had to give her up, for he had two children by her. However, he obeyed implicitly the law of the church, supporting his second wife and her children, but living with my mother."
Later this gentleman took me to call at the home of this old couple. The husband, more than eighty years of age, was a professional man with a degree from a large eastern university. He was a gentleman of the old school, very fine, dignified, and gracious, and there was an air about him which somehow made me think of a sturdy, straight old tree. As for his wife she was one of the two most adorable old ladies I have ever met.
Very simply she told me of the early days. Her parents had been well-to-do Pennsylvania Dutch and had left a prosperous home in the East and come out to the West, not to better themselves, but because of their religion. (One should always remember that, in thinking of the Mormons: whatever may have been the rights and wrongs of their religion, they have believed in it and suffered for it.) She, herself, was born in 1847, in a prairie schooner, on the banks of the Missouri River, and in that vehicle she was carried across the plains and through the passes, to where Salt Lake City was then in the first year of its settlement. Some families were still living in tents when she was a little girl, but log cabins were springing up. Behind her house, I was shown, later, the cabin—now used as a lumber shed—in which she dwelt as a child.