Says I, “One man’s heart hain’t of much account, viewed in a permiscus way, but to the woman that loves him it’s a good deal, it is all. Wimmen are foolish about some things, and this is one of ’em. Her love is to her the very breath she breathes—it is the best part of her. Men don’t feel this way as a general thing (my Josiah duz, but he is a shinin’ exception). But as a general thing love is to them a sort of a side-show, a tolerable good entertainment, but it hain’t the hull circus.
“No, a man’s heart hain’t none too large for one woman to dwell in, especially if she is hefty, not at all too large, quite the reverse. And I can tell you, Elder Judas Wart, and tell it firm and solemn, that when it comes to dividin’ up that heart that was a tight fit in the first place, and lettin’ one woman after another come a troopin’ in, a pushin’ the lawful owner out of the way, jammin’ her round, bruisin’ of her, and in the end crowdin’ her completely out in the cold, I say, may God pity such a woman, for human pity can’t be made pitiful enough to reach her.”
Says Elder Judas Wart, “Men that hain’t Mormons sometimes has more than one woman inside of their hearts.”
“I know it,” says I. “But the law gets right onto such a man and stamps onto him. And public sentiment sets down on him hard. And I can tell you that when the hull community and law and religion and everything are all a settin’ on a man, and settin’ heavy, that man finds it is a pretty tuckerin’ business; he gets sick of it, and is glad to do better and be let up. But you make the iniquity lawful. You make law and religion and public sentiment all get under such a man, and boost him up—make out that the more crimes a man commits, the more wives he has, the higher place he will have in heaven. Why,” says I, “when I think it over, it hain’t no wonder to me that the Mormon leaders, before they let loose this shameful doctrine and putrifyin’ sin of polygamy, they settled down by a salt lake. I should have thought they would have needed salt. But salt never was made salt enough to save ’em, and they’ll find out so.”
He quailed a very little, or, that is, it looked like quail, though it might have been meachin’ness strong and severe. Powerful meach looks some like quail, at a first look. But he recovered himself in half a moment, and went on, in the haughtiest, impudentest tone he had used as yet:
“Wall, whether salt has helped us, or whatever did, we have flourished—nobody can deny that. We have made the desert blossom like a rose. We are industrious, stiddy, prudent, equinomical, hard-working. You can’t deny the good we have done in that way. We are full of good qualities, brim full of ’em.”
Says I, coldly, almost frigidly, “No amount of white-wash can cover up a whited sepulker so that my specks can’t see through it, and see the sepulker. Good store clothes can’t cover up a bad soul worth a cent. A blue satin vest, or even a pink velvet one, buttoned up over a bad heart, can’t make that heart none the purer. The vest might look well, and probable would. But when you know the bad heart beats under it, vile and wicked beats, why, that vest don’t seem no better to you, nor seem to set the man off no more, than if it was calico, with leather buttons. Material good can never make up for moral degradation.
“And your good qualities only make your sinful practices more dangerous, more successful in luring souls to destruction. It is like wreathin’ a sword with flowers, for folks to grip holt of and get their hands cut off (morally). It is like coverin’ a bottomless gulf with blossoming boughs, for folks to walk off on, and break their necks (as it were).”
“Wall,” says he proudly, “we have flourished, and are flourishin’ and are goin’ to still more. We are goin’ to extend our doctrine of polygamy further and further. We are goin’ to carry it into Arizona and all the other new territories—”
I riz right up, I was so agitated, and says I: “You shan’t carry it, not one step.”