Says I, “Your church teaches thou shalt covet ’em, every one of ’em, and get ’em, too, the hull on ’em—wife, property, and maidservant, ’specially the maidservant.”
He quailed. And right there, while he was a quailin’, I spoke, and says coldly:
“Now, Elder Judas Wart, you have read off the commandments of God, one by one, and I have preached on ’em; now tell me, and tell me plain, which one do you lean on the hardest?”
Says he, “As it were—that is, you know—”
“No!” says I, with dignity, “I don’t know, nor you don’t, nuther.”
Says he, “I—that is—you—you are unreasonable, mum.” And he looked curious, and spit fiercely onto the stone hearth and the floor.
“I don’t mean to be,” says I. “I sot out in this talk with principles as hefty as I ever hefted in my life, and if I hain’t a good judge of the common heft of principles, nobody ever was. Why,” says I, “the rights and wrongs of my sect has for years been held nearer to my heart than any earthly object, exceptin’ my Josiah. And I can tell you, and tell you plain, that I have laid awake nights a thinkin’ over what my sect has endured a settin’ under that Mormon church. And daytimes I have sot a knittin’ and thought of the agonies of them female wimmen till there wuzn’t a dry eye in my head, and I couldn’t tell for my life whether I was a seamin’ or a knittin’ plain, or what I was a doin’. For of all the sufferin’s my sect has suffered from the hands of man, this doctrine of polygamy is the very crown, the crown of thorns. Other wrongs and woes have spilte earth for her time and agin, but this destroys her hope of heaven. When other sorrows and wrongs broke her heart, killed her, she could still look to the time when she could take the hand of Death, the Healer, and he would lead her into Repose, give her the peace earth had denied her. She could think that all her burdens of sorrows and wrongs would drop from her into the grave; and in that land where all tears are wiped away—that land of eternal beauty—of sweet consolation for the weary—she could find rest. But this last hope of the broken-hearted, your accursed doctrine has destroyed. Your infamous belief teaches that if a woman won’t do wrong, won’t submit to man’s tyrannical will on earth, commit sin for his sake, he won’t let her go to heaven! Good land!” says I, “it makes me sweat to think on’t.” And I wiped my forward on my apron.
Says he: “As it were, you know.”
“No, I don’t know it,” says I warmly. “Nor I never shall know it.”
Says he: “And so forth, and so on.”