“Why some of his dialogues are almost as keen and sensible and flowery as them that have taken place between a certain woman that I won’t mention the name of, and her pardner Josiah. Why, jest the fact that he got sold once for talkin’ so plain in the cause of Right, endeared him to me. And the fact that he didn’t fetch only twenty minnys (and we all know what small fish they be) didn’t make him seem any the less valuable to me. No, not at all so; it wouldn’t, if he hadn’t fetched more than one little chub.
“Them views of his’en, them witherin’ idees aginst tyrany that he was preachin’ to a tyrent, whales couldn’t lug, nor sharks. They was too big and hefty to be bought or sold. But because Mr. Plato was all right in some things, we mustn’t think he was in all. We are apt to think so, and we are apt to think that that because a gulf of a thousand or two years lay between us and a certain person, that it seperates them from all our mortal errors and simplicities.
“But it hain’t so. That old man had other human weaknesses besides writin’ poetry. I persume Miss Plato had to deal real severe with him lots of times, jest as I do with Josiah. I dare persume to say she had hard work to get along with him more’n half the time. And if he believed in Mormonism, he believed in sunthin’ wicked and abominable, and if I had been on intimate terms with him and her, I should have talked to him like a sister, right before her, so she would feel all right about it, and not get oneasy and jealous. I should have talked powerful to him, and if he is the man I take him to be, I could have convinced him in ten minutes, I know I could.”
Mr. and Mrs. Plato.
“Wall,” says he, “bringin’ the history of our church down to Christ’s day: He was a believer in it.”
I riz right up in a awful dignity and power, and I says, in a tone that was fearful to hear, it was so burnin’ indignant:
“You say that agin in my house, if you dare.”
He dassent, my tone was such. He never said a word, but sot kinder scroochin’ and meachin’ on his chair, and I went on, resumin’ my seat agin, knowin’ as I did that my principles was so hefty I had better save myself all the extra weariness that I could. Says I:
“You dare to say that He, the Deliverer of His people from sin and evil—He, the Teacher of all purity, morality, honesty, and all Christian virtues, who came bringin’ peace on earth, good will to men—He, who taught that a man should have one wife, and be tender and constant to her, even as He loved the Church and gave Himself for it—He, whose life was so pure and self-denyin’ and holy that it brought the divine down to the comprehension of the human—the love and purity of God manifest in the flesh—how dare you tell me that He was a Mormon?”